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^^i^^i^m^^l:^ garden Adventurer 

MARGAR^ET EMERSON BAILEY 




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Robin Hood's Barn 





EACH JUNE I TURN INTO THE COW LANE THAT LEADS TO 
KSIGHBOaiNG FIELDS 



ROBIN HOOD'S BARN 

The Confessions of a Garden Adventurer 



BY 



MARGARET EMERSON BAILEY 




WITH DRAWINGS BY 

WHITMAN BAILEY 




NEW T2r^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



5J3 H-55 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



EOBIN HOOD'S BARN. I 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 



NOV io 1922 

) Cl A 6 9 2 4 4 
"Tic* I 



TO 

WILLIAM WHITMAN BAILEY 

A SLIGHT RETURN FOR RICH INHERITANCE 




The author acknowl- 
edges with thanks the 
permission to reprint such of these articles 
as appeared in country life and "This 
Thornhush, 3Iy Thornhush," which ap- 
peared in the providence neavs, and 
"Content'* which appeared in the provi- 
dence JOURNAL. 




I Pen Pricks 

LISTENING 

II Among the Prophets 
lot's wife 

III Keeping One's Place 

DUSK 

IV Dinner "with Diversions 

MY COVERLID 

V Friendly Spying 
VI Solomon or Sheba? 

SOLACE 

VII Job's Pool 

CONTENT 

VIII Garden Hospitality 

THE HUNTRESS 



17 

35 

37 
53 

55 
79 

81 
97 
99 

113 
129 

131 

145 

147 
157 



[xi] 



Contents 



IX Round Robin Hood's Barn 159 

X Fair Game 177 

TRIBUTE 197 

XI Garden Airs and Graces 199 

XII Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 217 

GROWTH 235 

XIII This Thornhush, My Thornbush 287 

THE ALCHEMIST 247 

XIV Comrades in Crime 249 
XV Followers of Saint Francis 261 

RAG-TAG AND BOB-TAIL 279 

XVI Parting Guests 281 

XVII Condescension That Withers 295 



[xii] 








ILLUSTRATIONS 



Each June I turn into the cow lane that leads to neighbor- 
ing fields Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Below a murky pit lies darkling, rich in blacks 27 

/ come back from my pilgrimage with brushes clean, 

my canvas all untoiiched 41 

Unknown to me, the garden has been reaching out 59 

This little gully is a thoroughfare for birds 87 

It is a pleasant prospect, this first border 103 

The lure for me lay in the clouds that took the bay at 

a fine gallop and went racing out to sea 137 

This pond is for me a place of high excitement 165 

/ missed the whir of knives, the rattle of the chains, 

the driver's ringing call 181 

Seated on the top of an embankment, I spread my bait 

enticingly upon my lap 221 

Our crowning achievement in my eyes was our first 

transplanted cedar 241 

Here he finds it pleasant to lie still and watch the 

flickering shadows of the willow 265 

[xiii] 



I: Pen Pricks 




I: Pen Pricks 



IF," said my brother as he turned the last page 
of an article I had contrived to fit his draw- 
ings, "if I could only write." 

"If," said I, as I scanned a pen and ink that 
somehow failed to illustrate my article, "if I 
could only draw." 

By which you are to understand that it is not 
only in the matter of technique that we fall be- 
hind the Hales or Pennells. That is as it may 
be. But what stops us short is the irksomeness 
of double harness. We do not wear it easily. 
One it makes balkish and the other skittish; 
one "whoas," the other "goes." Liking to 

[17] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

prance alone, to express our individual moods 
by dancing or curvetting, we could do without 
that yoke-fellow who holds down our high-step- 
ping and keeps us steady to his pace. 

So it is that while my brother turns the pages 
of "Our Sentimental Journey," those early ad- 
ventures of the Pennells made by tricycle through 
France and Spain, you must not think he is ad- 
miring solely the genius of the master-craf stman. 
True, he cannot help lingering over the small 
sketches scattered through the volume; poplars 
blown against a wind-swept sky; lanes winding 
in and out beside a hedge of bristling willows; 
courtyards set cool and deep in shadow by the 
foreground's sultry blaze; or peasants caught in 
an unconscious attitude by dextrous and unerring 
stroke. But deeper than his envy of the artist 
lies his envy of the man. That cantankerous cur- 
mudgeon, old Joe Pennell, who will admit no il- 
lustrator save himself since the brave swagger- 
ing days of Howard Pyle ! Let him bluster, let 
him grumble. Why, the man has the patience 
of a saint. Witness the books — a whole half- 
dozen — he has turned out with his wife. 

[i8] 



Pen Pricks 

And I, too, have my own reflections. My les- 
son in humility comes from the Hales. It is my 
country, that New England which they redis- 
covered on their last happy trip. Gay are the 
sketches, full of beating light and sunshine, 
whether it falls on pastures, self-sown with rocks 
and little cedars, on the uncompromising bleak- 
ness of the village church, or on mill towns hud- 
dled close about a dingy river side. But there 
is the tartness of a Rhode Island greening to the 
text. It delights where it most piques. To some 
I know it has given a wry mouth. And why 
not ? What else would you expect from her who 
recently played "Mamma Bett"? Impossible 
that that peppery old lady who could so chastise 
with the valor of her tongue, should write with 
other than a caustic pen. In "Beyond the Hori- 
zon," too, did not her grim humor crackle like 
a lightning flash across the blackness of the sky ? 
Inimitable, but, so you insist, a person of one 
part. Last year she had recovered from a spell 
and was meddlesomely up from her wheel-chair. 
She would be lost without her "tantrims." I tell 
you I know better. For many years she played 

[19] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Griselda, patient and submissive. Look at the 
books she wrote to provide her husband with a 
text. 

Now when we compare ourselves to Joseph 
Pennell and Louise Closser Hale, we feel that we 
are better tempered publicly. My brother can- 
not growl and I can never snap. One of us is 
mellow and the other mild, though I prefer not 
to say which. But let us take our pens in hand 
and they inevitably turn upon each other. We 
fence, cross-hatch with spluttering jibe. Prick 
follows prick. 

"You see," my brother was now thinking how 
he would have liked to write my article on Poe 
and Mrs. Whitman. How differently it would 
have read! "I don't know the meanings of the 
words you use. Decorum, I don't see where that 
comes in." 

Yet it was that word I knew that had fought 
and stifled passion, single-handed. Alone, it had 
held bound Poe's "Helen of a thousand dreams." 

"And there's another." This time my brother's 
manner was reminiscent of the nursery. You 
might think that I had taken some unfair ad- 

[20] 



Pen Pricks 

vantage of his age and size. "It begins with 
'trans.' I thought that it was never going to 
end." 

"Transcendentalism," I finished out politely. 
Then I paused. It was as well that he should not 
know that writers sometimes use words which 
they too cannot explain. In any case his inter- 
est in it was merely in its length of buzz. He 
made it clear that he was unpleasantly impressed. 

"If I should come to call on you," he said, "I 
could last out just fifteen minutes. I could talk 
that long on art. Then I should have to make a 
bolt." 

"But suppose I talked on literature." 

The bolt was an accomplished fact. 

He had gone to the piano which serves him 
oftenest as an easel and stood looking at his 
sketches with an appreciative eye. One was Mrs. 
Whitman's house, prim and square, set rigidly 
upon the pavement, a little smug in the self -con- 
sciousness with which it toed the mark. From 
my point of view it offered opportunity for con- 
trast. Poe, crying out the anguish of his part- 
ing within those spare, unyielding walls. His 

[21] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

Helen recovering from the precautionary fumes 
of ether just long enough to say farewell. Bleak 
harborage for tragic romance! But for my 
brother, this lady whose inheritance had kept her 
fluttering in bondage, had chosen her house 
wisely. Certainly for his convenience. Nice per- 
spective to the silent empty street. Nice the 
shadows on the roof and doorway that fell spat- 
tering from the high elm. And that other picture 
of the garden ! There he felt that I had had my 
chance. A tale of moonlight and midsummer 
madness. Past twelve o'clock, and Poe abroad 
in Providence, that staid New England city that 
still kept curfew and tucked itself so early into 
bed. The drift of perfume in the darkness. 
Sweetbrier and flowering currant, misty in the 
radiance. And below them, with a silver glamour 
full upon her, Helen seated on a flowery bank. 
Was there ever such a meeting? They two in the 
whole slumbrous town, awake. And I had 
stopped to talk of literary coteries and transcen- 
dentalism. Yes, it really was a pity that a fellow 
could not write. 

My failure, of course, was unintentional. But 
[22] 



Pen Pricks 

it was a giddy business, teaming. He never knew 
when I would walk soberly past crossroads or 
when take the bit between my teeth. Now in mat- 
ters more prosaic, I plodded forward with de- 
corxmi. You see he had learned the meaning of 
the word and now used it as a sidewise prankish 
nip. 

There was that article I did on the American 
Screw Industry. He had dropped it on me sud- 
denly because he liked the chance it offered him; 
chimneys smirching a clear sky ; the plant itself, 
great slabs of light and shadow; the mill-stream 
tumbling forward from obscurity in curds of 
foam. But he had not guessed that I could 
write so well the history of tacks and cold-cut 
nails. And that square in a provincial suburb; 
a dowdy little row of shops where business came 
to life at six o'clock with the closing of the mills. 
I had never seen it and he had had to draw for 
me a map. Baker here and butcher there, depart- 
ment store and notions, with the druggist's just 
around the corner. Yet somehow, constructed 
on such slight foundations, it stood firm. He had 
gone out to see in the eager fashion that he has, 

[23] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

the night his picture went to press. And the 
people liked it. What's more they liked my ar- 
ticle. It was a ten strike. Why, the market 
man had said I wrote as easily as he himself 
cleaned fish. I remember the elation with which 
my brother bore that tribute home. 

But when it came to romance, I showed my- 
self a college woman. You understand that I 
belong to a generation when education was re- 
garded as a virus left forever in the blood. I 
was overcultivated, timorous of sentiment. I 
stumbled and fell down before it. When I met 
it in the road, I balked. 

Such times, however, as I ask my brother to 
illustrate my articles, it is he who strains the har- 
ness. In an unhappy day he saw the work of 
Lester Hornby and at the same time heard the 
application of the word "quaint." No use since 
then to give him the freedom of your city. You 
may shut off your boulevards, wrap up your mon- 
uments, exclude him from your public hospitals 
and libraries, from all that stirs your civic pride. 
He will not give a rap. For already he will have 
wandered down a by-way, have set his stool upon 

[24] 



Pen Pricks 

Si dump, and be hard at work on a prospect of 
the backs of houses, of tumbled shanties, and old 
sheds. No use to put on a good front. He will 
catch your city from the rear. 

So at least he caught my garden. It was a 
sketch made at my request and to accompany a 
fantasy for Country Life. Not hard to imagine 
the kind that I desired. Some corner of my own 
half -acre that could be entered in a competition 
with a fine estate. Now he had skill at omissions. 
Wouldn't he be willing, just by the mere blank- 
ness of the paper, to tell a convenient white lie? 
Let the pathway trail off to a distant prospect, 
and couldn't the whole thing at the edges be left 
a little vague? In other words, I had been a 
braggart with my tongue and with his hand, I 
expected him to help me out. 

He promised solemnly and disappeared. For 
a good two hours, whenever I peered cautiously 
between the curtains, I saw his white cap gleam- 
ing in the distance. Then in he came. At first 
he would not let me see his handiwork. It must 
not be grabbed and regarded at close range. A 
shade was drawn, another shade pulled up until 

[25] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

the light was properly adjusted. But when at 
length he unveiled his vision of my garden, I 
beheld, not the circling pathways and trim hedges 
I had boasted; not the bird-bath and arbor, my 
sole garden ornaments ; no, not even flowers. He 
had done the onion patch, bald pates nodding in 
the sunhght; and behind a shelving rock loomed 
two dead scraggly trees ! 

Nor is it safe to let him have his way with 
country rambles. I must act as guide and take 
the lead. Even then I dare not skirt a barn, 
but make for open pastures and go far afield. 
For let a weathervane but tip the hilltop and he 
makes straight towards it, as though homing to 
his stall. The attraction — ^if you will have it — 
comes from his knowledge that somewhere below 
a murky pit lies darkling, rich in blacks. I have 
told him firmly that it is trite, that it has been 
done a thousand times before. Of no avail. Let 
him once find it and it seizes hold of his imagina- 
tion. Talk as I will, he does not even hear. Look 
at that oblong window festooned with silver cob- 
webs. Look at that silver light that filters 
through it to the muck below. How it throws 

[26] 




BELOW A MURKY PIT LIES DARKLING, RICH IK BLACKS. 

[27] 



Pen Pricks 

back in shadow every dim recess. And that Leg- 
horn rooster on the pile. Can't I see that he adds 
the necessary touch of utter white. Nor does 
my brother wait for me to answer. Without 
more ado he has perched himself upon the wall 
that binds the cowlane, his pad upon his knees, 
his pencil out. 

It is not merely his delight in homely scenes, 
however, that works havoc with my articles. 
Sometimes it is his way of jumping facts. His- 
torical accuracy is for him no bar. In contrast 
to my own heavj^-footed plodding, he does not 
see his obstacles and clears them nimbly without 
knowing they are there. 

Not long ago in an old volume, I ran foul of a 
pirate who lurked about New England shores. A 
satisfying brigand so I found him. In fact, "his 
deeds of prowess could not be related," said the 
author, "without giving Nature a too grievous 
shock." Such, however, as I might considerately 
retell for a still more queasy generation called 
for a background, sinister and grim. Trium- 
phantly, my brother called it forth ; a coast where 
tumbled bowlders were pitched high, clouds omi- 

[29] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

nous and brooding, the running dash and foam of 
heavy seas. With desperation to her leeward 
tack and slanting masts, a boat was speeding, 
small, defenseless, towards the skyline. And 
overhauling her, a brig had set its sails full to the 
gale and had clapped upon its mizzen-mast an 
ugly flag. There was no question but the sketch 
was done with cruelty and gusto. Yet in one 
corner in the pettifogging way I have, I noticed 
something not quite congruous. By 1724, my 
buccaneer had come to his bad end, and high on 
the cliff a modern lighthouse bhnked its star. 

"It's needed by the composition," said my 
brother firmly. "It cannot come out." 

So in it stayed, its beacon thrown a Httle dis- 
concertingly upon my scholarship. Still while 
I yielded, I could not help thinking that instead 
of deacon and divine, it was a pity that the Puri- 
tans had not begot an artist. It would have been 
so much more practical. The Hesperus had not 
been wrecked. A Hghthouse would have stood 
on Norman's Woe, sprung complete and Jove- 
born from the artist's brain. 

After so much frankness, it is only fair to state 

[30] 



Pen Pricks 

that very different is our attitude when we in- 
vade each other's province. Let my brother bring 
a caption he has written for a drawing and I do 
not carp or criticize. At most I twist a clause 
or clip a participle and not before I tell him that 
I like his use of words. Or happier times there 
are on Sunday mornings when I too go sketch- 
ing, a pleasant fiction on our part, sustained 
chiefly as it brings companionship. At most I 
have what in music would be called a natural 
touch and surprise as one of those prodigies who 
"has never had a lesson." But for all that I do 
not fear my brother's comments. Inevitably at 
the end of a long silent morning in which we sit 
just out of sight, yet warmly conscious of each 
other's nearness, a shadow falls across my work 
and I hear a voice exclaim, "You've hit on a nice 
composition." In a moment my 'brother is cross- 
legged on the grass beside me. "You don't 
mind." He lays an accent on my walls, picks 
out the high-hghts on my haystacks, sweeps in a 
sky. Nor does his generosity refuse me a whole 
foreground. Before I know it, he has pulled the 

[31] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

scattered details all together. I am bewildered. 
It seems that I have done a sketch. 

"That's nice," he says, as he returns it to me. 
"It's a pity really that you do not draw." 

I reach my handiwork before me until it bal- 
ances against my upturned toes. Then I smile 
broadly at him. 

"It's a pity," I reply, "that you don't write." 



[32] 



II: Among the Prophets 



LISTENING 

These are the sounds I hsten for: 
The lift of the gray dawn. 

It rises up inaudibly 

Like breath of wind, newborn. 

The rush of speeding clouds that race 

Elate above the gale. 
They spread their sheet rebelliously 

With smack of unfurled sail. 

The liquid notes that sunshine spills 
On sheltered roofs and walls. 

It spatters down as merrily 
As spray from waterfalls. 

The quivering of noonday glare 

Upon the stubborn hill. 
It chips off light relentlessly 

As though with workman's drill. 

[35] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

The murmur that blue shadows make 

In settling down to rest. 
They drop to ground as tenderly 

As brooding bird to nest. 

The moon's arrest of ecstasy 

In coming on the bay. 
I've heard it pause exultantly 

Before it took its way. 



[36] 




II: Among the Prophets 



IT was my fortune recently in an old New 
England primer to come upon a list of 
the true prophets, the spelling of whose names 
and the facts of whose existence every Christian 
child should know. And among those who had 
known and followed the true God, I found not 
Saul, but Mahomet — ^branded. "A celebrated 
impostor who pretended to be a prophet." 
Clearly there was no more to be said. Nor should 

[37] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

I myself have dared to question this authoritative 
dictum, had not its spokesman later lowered his 
eyes from spiritual realms to the kingdom of this 
earth. A little further on, where he had placed 
the essentials of geography meetly following the 
essentials of religion, there was another list, this 
time of our great rivers — and in their midst I 
hailed the Mississippi with a burst of pride. Not 
national, mind you. Personal. I still could spell 
it. My tongue was already playing hop-scotch 
with its double consonants as in more agile days. 
"I-double-s, i-double-s, i-double-p." I had made 
it and landed firm on the last i. But there I 
stopped dismayed. Flowing just beneath it, rac- 
ing it, almost outrunning it across the page, was 
the Piscataqua of Maine. By a more successful 
imposition than Mahomet's, it had disguised its 
real importance and taking on false dignity, was 
out on masquerade. 

I like to think how many years it sidled by and 
went uncaught. For I am on the side of all pre- 
tenders, whether they lay claim to a mantle of 
green hills and snowy mountain sources or to 
the mantle of Elijah; whether it be Mahomet the 

[38] 



Among the Prophets 

unbeliever, or the Piscataqua of Maine. It is 
enough for me that there was aspiration. To 
filch the title of great river was at least to dream 
upon the beauties consequent. To steal the title 
of true prophet was for the first Mussulman to 
seek his revelations in the desert solitudes ; and in 
praying with his face towards Mecca, to hft his 
eyes upon the glory of the setting sun. Who 
would not play false when he so might wrongly 
win? 

Not I at least ; for it is much in the same spirit 
that I pretend to paint. To be sure I do not 
bring my revelations home. I seek no converts. 
I fear that should I do so even with the sword, I 
could but martyr truth. And though in these 
usurping days any upstart may arise self- 
knighted, I make no attempt to take my place 
among the master painters and to head their for- 
mal list. My pretensions are set forth with a 
far different intent. Not that I may win great 
place, but a remote one. Not that a multitude 
shall greet me with acclaim, but that they shall 
grant me to depart in peace. I would have them 
gain for me the privilege of an occasional hegira, 

[39] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

a pilgrimage where I may seek my shrines in sol- 
itude, be rapt clean out of myself. 

And without pretensions, it is not so easy. 
Even with them, the Piscataqua must have found 
it hard to persuade those who knew its sluggish 
habits, that it was fitted for other than a service- 
able hfe. And without them, Mahomet, faring 
forth into the desert, would have found a staying 
hand upon his camel's bridle and the Widow of 
Medina impertinently asking at what hour she 
might expect him home. I know; for let me, 
like any other person, say that I am going off to 
walk, that I have need of solitude, and there are 
a hundred duties that intrude. The votary of 
woods and fields is soon transformed to vestal, a 
common bondsmaid of the hearth. Such rags and 
tatters of the day as I may gather will do at 
best for comfortable gossip. It is in the gleam- 
ing widespread raiment of the morning that I 
would set forth to commune. 

If I am to don it, I must announce a far dif- 
ferent intention. Boldly must I make it known 
that I am starting off to paint. But not, you 
understand, so baldly. There must be prepara- 

[40] 







:-..S:C- A/. 




[ C05IE BACK V^OISI MY PIU5RIMAOK WITH BRUSHES CLEAN, MY CAKTAS 
ALL UNTOUCHED. 



[41] 



Among the Prophets 

tions as for service. With a quiet stir, I must 
lift the vessels of my priestly office from the desk 
which is their shrine. Then as I begin to lay 
them out, canvas, brush, and palette, and to pre- 
pare them with solemnity, the voices of demand 
are stilled; there is a reverent hush. The wives 
of Joseph Smith would as soon have asked for a 
distribution of affection at the moment that he 
placed the golden spectacles upon his brow and 
took down the golden book. 

But should you too desire a right to your es- 
cape, you must first acquire a legend. My own 
dates back, as any prophet's should, to childish 
days when wide-eyed in wonder at the honor that 
had come upon me, I reported the authoritative 
voice. Impossible then to suspect one so conven- 
tionally round and rosy, so stolid in acceptance, 
of subterfuge or guile. Moreover, I could lead 
all scoffers to the very place. It was at East 
Gloucester. At the end of a long walk through 
bayberry and bracken, I had come upon a beach 
scooped out between red cliffs. And here with 
sketch pad on my knee, I sat among the salvage, 
washing in crude surfaces of black and white. 

[43] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Little enough had they to do with the prospect 
before me; a sky of windy power, a sea where 
purple shadows raced the clouds above them, and 
where a fitful sun struck sparks of glinting steel. 
As I dipped my brush into the ink-well, I heard 
a crunching step, a pause, and then the sound of 
laughter rising through a shaggj^ throat. 

"Does nothing tell you, young one," said a 
voice behind me, "that you can't do a day of 
mystery with a bottle of black ink?" 

I answered honestly that nothing did. 

"Suppose then that I tell you." There was a 
chuckle. 

"And who are you?" 

"Twachtman, the painter." 

But as he crossed his legs and dropped in 
friendly fashion on the beach beside me, I knew 
him for the goat-god, Pan. How not know the 
thatch of hair thrust upward as by horns, the 
grotesque face, the shaggy pelt? Yet though I 
had heard him to be wayward and arrogant in 
the glimpses of himself he gave to mortals, there 
seemed no reason for alarm. Mirth was in his 
eyes and round his bearded mouth and the shout 

[44] 



Among the Prophets 

of merriment he gave was at my young presump- 
tion. I had refused his lore on trust. 

"Shall I show you?" 

I snuggled close to watch beside his arm. 

In a second he had begun to pour forth strange 
melody upon a canvas and the pipes he used 
were brushes flecked with paint. Against the 
sunny brilliance of the sky, clouds sped, free- 
moving. Wind stirred the deep troughs of the 
water and lifted from it foam that was as fugi- 
tive as dreams. And where the waves curved 
and broke in rout of white along the shore, there 
was exultancj" that had behind it, the whole wild 
pushing tumult of the sea. It was the sea grown 
conscious, with rhythm and with pulse. 

Then swiftly with its satisfaction, the Piper's 
mood had gone. His eyes that had been staring 
out with stern iirtelligence turned downward, 
lightly mocking at the silence of my wonder ; and 
with a shaking free of sand, he had risen to his 
feet. 

"Now run home, youngster," with a smile both 
prankish and companionable, he sped me on my 

[45] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Marathon, "and tell your mother that I'll teach 
you how to paint." 

He was to disappear, however, far too soon for 
that. And though I like sometimes to think he 
might have worked his miracle, I know that I 
am blinking facts. Still, a little he did teach me 
of his close companioning with earth. That trees 
were not to be interpreted alone by outline and 
by color, but by an understanding of their 
growth. There was the timidity of aspens that 
put them in a flutter before they felt the breeze, 
the light way of willows in the wind, the compas- 
sionate nobility of elms. The oak drew stuff for 
gallantry from its far-reaching roots. The pine 
was always solitary with loneliness a-stirring in 
its heart. And he made clear the ways of clouds. 
The wanton ones that frisked across the sky to 
little purpose and must be rendered with a gay- 
ety just equal to their own. Those bolder ones 
that went adventuring. And thunder clouds, 
brigands that ran up their great black flags 
against a western sky-line and bore down upon 
a world they robbed of gold. Nor was the wind 
always the same mad bullying fellow with his 

[46] 



Among the Prophets 

cheeks outpuff ed. If you were to catch him thus, 
you had to work with gusto. But there were bet- 
ter days when he was content with whistling; and 
then you showed his presence by the bend of 
branch and tree-top and the dancing shadows 
that he shook. Or on other days he came slowly, 
lilting; and you could only hint his presence 
gently by the play of light among the leaves. 
Sometimes, moreover, he was drowsed by summer 
heat ; and you had to give the clew to fitful slum- 
ber by the stir of grass or bracken on the moors. 
Water, too, like wind, was undependable, never 
twice the same. Here at the coast it was often 
fierce and often sullen, yet threatening always in 
its power. But in hidden inland places the as- 
pect that you tried to give it, was one of delicacy 
and shimmering grace. And lucky were you if 
you could contrive to show the surface faintly 
warmed above the icy springs below. Line and 
rhythm you might hope to capture, but never 
space. Nor depth — that was not final, though 
mysteriously deepening, fold on fold. But what- 
ever you were after, you were to look with eyes 
of wonder, with perpetual astonishment. The 

[47] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

new beauty of each day was your very own to 
seek. 

However, as I later came to know, this beauty 
was no light-of-love to be forced and hurried into 
yielding. Sought roughly, come on carelessly, it 
escaped the memory after a faint tingling of the 
sense. If it was to draw close, to show its open 
face, it must be sought as the painter seeks it, 
in quietness, in patience, and in peace. Each 
bravery of color, each grace of line, must be taken 
first into the mind, considered carefully, and rev- 
erently held. So only would it give itself into 
possession; a possession so complete that it 
merged with consciousness and became a part of 
one's own self. 

What matter that I cannot set such wonders 
down, translate them to a testament ; that I come 
back from my pilgrimage with brushes clean, my 
canvas all untouched? Surely it is something 
awesome to have seen; and to have in the holy 
places of my mind a beauty beyond my own ca- 
pacity to paint. Tarnished might grow the clear 
yellow of the mustard fields beneath my touch, 
and dulled the azure that slopes down so bril- 

[48] 



Among the Prophets 

liantly to meet the rising crest. Muddy might 
turn the purple richness of the cedar plumes and 
the red shafts that rise so straight from tugging 
with the open clefts. The mast of the old button- 
wood might soar less straight and white up to its 
broken rigging and the brave tatter of its sails. 
And surely the scurrying clouds that stream 
across the sky would lag, the wind among the 
com would pass less fleet. But in my imagina- 
tion they keep their beauty in a high clean soli- 
tude. There, inviolate, they rest secure. 

And so conscious of their haunting presence 
am I, that I too would take my place among the 
prophets; those who go forth to desert and to 
wilderness for the communication that will come 
to them, alone. Should you, however, meet me 
returning empty-handed and, like many another 
skeptic ask what I had gone to seek, I could only 
give you an old answer, 

"A reed shaken by the wind." 

Aye, verily, and in my answer there would be 
the reverence of one to whom this vision has been 
once vouchsafed. 

[49] 



Ill: Keeping One's Place 



LOT'S WIFE 

I like to think that Lot's Wife, 

Defiant of the Lord, 
Could brave His flaming anger, 

The flash of His bright sword. 
To turn a backward look upon 

The city He abhorred. 

I hope she saw her roof -tree 
Before the brimstone came, 

The little plot in Sodom 

That Lot bought in her name, 

And that it stayed untouched until 
Her eyes were seared with flame. 

She turned perhaps half -doubting 

A Righteousness so grim 
As to destroy her hearthstone 

For some strange Man-God's whim. 
Before she turned to salt, I'm sure 

She had strange thoughts of Him. 

[53] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

No matter what compelled her. 
Some treasure she forsook, 

A wish to ease the burden 
Of memories she took, 

I know I should have pardoned her 
For that brave, backward look. 



[54] 




Ill: Keeping- One's Place 



TT is a fortunate matter that my misalliance 
-*- with Touisset was contracted not with a per- 
son, but a place. Had it been the former, I 
should have proved an intolerable wife. Not un- 
faithful, mind you. There have been at least 
twelve summers to show how eagerly I make re- 
turn to bed and board. But times there have been 
when my fidelity was a discomfortable virtue, 

[55] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

attended by too zealous prodding. In Puritan 
days, I should have found my duck-pond incon- 
venient; for beshrew me, I am sharp of tongue. 
I nag. 

Not that I have ever had excuse for railing. 
Touisset won me by no false pretense. On that 
first day when I alighted at its little station, it 
made no promise of prosperity and laid bare its 
prospects manfully in the full blaze of a June sun. 
So easily it might have met me with deception and 
have tricked me with a mist. As I later came to 
know it has its days of silver beauty when fog 
hangs low upon the shallows and the headlands, 
fusing even ugly features to a blur and giving an 
unearthly glamour to the distant city on the hill. 

This day, however, it was in no mood for com- 
promise or for concealment. It made it evident 
what I might take or leave. With a stark hon- 
esty it had sent out the tide that comes swelling 
up the bay until it brims each cove and marshy 
inlet ; and with the ebb that sucked back to a nar- 
row gut of channel, a waste of ooze and clam- 
shells lay revealed. Waves there were, wind- 
shadows ruffling the sedge grass. But I might 

[56] 



Keeping One*s Place 

go elsewhere clearly if I wished a beach. So 
might I, if in the accepted sense I wished a view. 
Across an estuary a causeway ran off sidling 
without a decent shred of green to veil its flank. 
More remote, tide water shanties were cast up 
pitch and toss like so much wreckage about the 
farther shore. And above this sandy bluff of 
land which turned and ran out sharply at right 
angles, the mill turrets of Fall River rose grim 
and harsh against the sky. Entrenched on its 
high seat. Capital looked down on Labor even 
while on hoHday. W as I eager then for romance ? 
Here was no strange wildness to enchant me and 
to make me fall an easy conquest. Was I wist- 
ful after sentiment? Here was no appearance to 
deceive me by tenderness of color or bj^ suavity of 
line. The humdrimi facts of life were what con- 
fronted me. I must face them if I wished to set- 
tle down. 

Nor need I — at least if I had social aspira- 
tions — dally on the single sandy road that looped 
about the shore. One house there was, set cool 
and deep in shadow, that had a patriarchal dig- 
nity. Its first owner had built its chimney big 

[57] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

and made broad its eaves to give a generous and 
lasting shelter. Staunch it stood, timbered with 
great beams. The elms which surged around it 
had not struck a deeper root. But the other 
houses were of a new domestic architecture, con- 
structed hastily, scrub growth arising from the 
boles of old out-buildings and low-lying sheds. 
Slant of roof and width of front, dovecot still 
worn cap-a-pie, told of the forced conversion from 
an earlier purpose. Where there was narrow 
entrance, a wider door had once stood open to 
the garnering of crops. The small bungalows, 
waist deep in grass, told plainly that they had 
kept, not chosen, a humility of rafters to which 
fowls at dusk had fluttered up to roost. Sum- 
mer cottages, these now were advertised. Yet 
they wore their new adornments with no swag- 
ger of prosperity and rising fortunes. Rather 
with a tolerant good humor. Though they had 
put on porch and stoop, they could not put on 
airs. It was only when it came to simple human 
needs that they were willing to oblige. 

So inconspicuous was the position which I was 
to occupy among them that it was hard to find. 

[58] 




»*.-* 



UNKNOWN TO BfE, THE GAADEN HAD BEEN REACHINO OTTT. 



[59] 



Keeping One's Place 

No doubt it was my own young arrogance that 
blinded me. I remember that I had just chanced 
upon a writer who referred to his place raptur- 
ously as "the seat of his soul." The seat of mine I 
It demanded — so at least I thought — a gate, high 
hedge, stone walls for its protection from all 
casual contact; a flagged pathway, adrift with 
the perfume of spiced pinks or phlox for its deh- 
cate approach. What perversity of fortune then 
or what acknowledgment of crudity had turned 
my feet up a glaring clam-shell drive ? My sanc- 
tuary, moreover, was to be withdrawn a little 
from the common highway. With a certain 
hauteur and detachment I was to watch its cu- 
rious doings and to furnish — so I liked to 
fancy, glimpses of enticement for the passer-by. 
A willful aloofness, not enforced retirement was 
the vision I had held. Yet once I had reached 
the circle that had as its pivot an urn of gay pe- 
tunias, I realized that my front might as appro- 
priately be termed some one's else back yard. 
This was democracy undreamed! 

When, however, I beheld the settlement that 
might be mine in return for a most modest dowry, 

[6i] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

I took a liking to it at first sight. And not the 
tepid f eehng that makes a woman warm to her 
one chance. True, it was a mere frame house, 
not much to look at in the common parlance. A 
child might easily have planned it, adding its 
wide porch as a fine place to romp on and extend- 
ing it above the marsh that it might have the 
semblance of a deck almost a-wash above the 
rising tide. What I saw in the place, I should — 
to worldly minded folk, sure to think I might do 
better — find it most difficult to explain. But 
it had a character its own. A candor that was 
not my blurting frankness, close following each 
attempt at reticence. It had no failings which 
in a shame-faced way, it felt called on to "dis- 
cuss." Even its drive, its urn, its wooden chim- 
ney caught drying off upon the grass, left it com- 
pletely unabashed. Suppose they were all wrong, 
though to it they seemed all right. Even so — 
there was its youth, its newness. Mellowness 
and dignity? Those came with years, the touch 
of time. What it offered was a trig readiness for 
the play of wind and weather. The fun was all 
before. Tranquilhty and brooding hush? What 

[62] 



Keeping Ones Place 

was the torpid dozing over memories, the mere 
pottering in the past beside the eager quiet of 
expectancy? No, it had not seen better days. 
None better than that which now sunned its 
shingles and first coat of paint and drew up the 
fragrance of pink ramblers and syringas planted 
close about it. Surely it was something to stand 
there clean and fresh, untouched by past affec- 
tions, unbattered by experience, with traditions 
still to make. 

The impression was not superficial for it was 
confirmed inside. The two main rooms on which 
the door directly opened, gave forth no hint of 
mustiness, no empty odor of disuse. From ceil- 
ings, walls, and floors, came the savor of pine, as 
keen and resinous as though the trees had just 
been felled. Their matched boards were inno- 
cent of all design, but the arrested sap had left 
a pattern on their yellow surface that shimmered 
like a watered silk. Whatever history they held 
was this frank tracing of their last year's growth. 
Nowhere, moreover, were there the remnants left 
from old and intimate associations ; no books, no 
ornaments, no pictures to mark the peccadillos of 

[63] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

an earlier fancy, no signs of an allegiance which 
I might find it wise to overlook. The closets, 
too, were guiltless of all subterfuge, the corners 
of evasion. Search as I might, I could not find 
the shadow of a past. The place was almost too 
immaculate, too young for its year. It seemed 
absurd to have nothing more to show. Why I, at 
two and twenty was scarce older, and yet at a 
pinch, I had more that I might find it provocative 
to confess. However, it had a simpHcity to which 
I had not then attained. It dared to state its 
poverty, a poverty so neat, so bare, so stripped 
of all save fundamentals that the room seemed 
like the cabin of a ship in dry-dock before her 
maiden trip. And as though it were lying snug 
in harbor, the port-holes held little landscapes 
of bright color. The arch and sweep of elms, 
elders breaking into foam above an old gray wall, 
a stream seen only where it caught the light in 
filtering through the sedge; and rolling back 
from this deep trough of marshland, pastures that 
broke into green crest against a western sky. 

As I stood confronted by this brightness, im- 
mediate and inescapable, I felt a strange reversal 

[64] 



Keeping Ones Place 

of my earlier desire. Seclusion had grown moldy 
and by many shades too somber. I could not 
live so furtively. Arrogance now seemed austere. 
Surely there was something more approachable, 
more gracious even in this openness of manner 
that let the whole world in. Thus I accounted 
later for my quick surrender and the hurried cer- 
emony necessary to the sealing of our bond. 

In our first summer, still so happy to remem- 
ber, it was I who claimed indulgence. Ours was, 
in fact, a poor one-sided bargain in which I 
shirked my part. I was no housewife. What's 
more I was wayward ; and the sober ritual set me 
I made no attempt to learn. That New England 
ancestor of mine who in virtuous reproof wrote 
the word "Slut" upon her neighbor's dusty table 
would have called my easy going by a harsher 
name than "slicking up." It was much simpler 
than the lazy efforts of a slattern, for I raised 
the windows high to a sea gale that raked the 
place from end to end. A more sweetening pro- 
cess to my way of thinking, this that smacked of 
salt and bayberries, than the stir of dust from mop 
or broom. I had, too, my own blithe ideas about 

[65] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

bed-making and preferred for thorough airing 
those mornings when I answered to the call of 
a full tide. And if my dishes did not "stand," 
my tidiness was due to the position of the kitchen 
sink. This was no solitary place of penance to 
transform the gadabout to drudge. Through the 
window just above it, I had clear access to the 
fields and orchard and might watch for all that 
stirred the world outside. Quite often, as I 
rinsed, and scoured, and scrubbed, I was specta- 
tor at a quiet drama. A quail with courting crest 
erect would come mincing down my path and se- 
cure of solitude would call softly to his mate. A 
pair of yellow warblers, always debonair and un- 
concerned at my appearance, would calm down 
to their domestic duties and make discovery of 
their small nest. Or a heron would fly up from 
the stream and settling on the wall, would slyly 
preen his quaker plumage. But as a rule I played 
unseen official and reviewed maneuvers on the 
duck pond where a white flotilla was at sea. A 
far different business this, that was the mere ac- 
companiment to pastime, than any earlier en- 
counters I had had with pots and pans. Even 

[66] 



Keeping Ones Place 

provisioning took on a zest since I did not have 
to compromise myself by telephone and might 
go out to fill my basket inspirationally from the 
truck teams on the road. Suppose things were 
not ordered. Suppose at my caprice, I dropped 
them, overlooked them, let them wait. My house 
was no domestic tyrant. When I chanced to look 
its way it was complacent and brought me up 
with no sharp reminders of indifference or of neg- 
lect. It was there it seemed to say to hold my 
peace in keeping. So long as I was happy, it 
would not interfere. 

It was not long, however, before our security 
was threatened from outside. Those friends with 
whom I thought to break off short by disappear- 
ance, had got wind of my whereabouts. Sweetly 
rustic, so it sounded. But was my attachment 
sordid or romantic? They would not drop me 
until they had been to see. And so one after- 
noon I met the first outrider scouting on the road. 
She had been looking for my place, she couldn't 
seem to find it. Some one had said something 
of a marsh. I pointed to it lying tawny in the 
sunlight and then to the strip of shells that 

[67] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

edged its girdling wall with a white stare. Could 
she drive in ? Much better not, unless she wished 
to back the whole way out. So this then was my 
entrance? How amusing. But was it healthy 
to have the swamp right there beneath my nose? 
Surely, too, I must find it living at close quar- 
ters to have neighbors quite so near. And the 
cottage ! In one second, she had taken in its size 
and the brave errors of its taste. Still she had 
no doubt that it was handy. By that, she meant 
that I had not even had an eye for looks. And 
of a sudden I saw my house only as she saw it, 
small, hot, violently flushed, devoid of spacious- 
ness and cool repose. 

Nor had I that high loyalty of silence that 
meets criticism with contempt. I affected to dis- 
claim my own. This affair of mine was, I pro- 
tested, a free union, not a settled matter. I had 
entered on it lightly; I had incurred no respon- 
sibilities. When I felt myself growing weary, 
there were no ties to keep me bound. 

No ties? Were places where birth and love 
and death had written in their history, the only 
ones that held ? Were human happenings all that 

[68] 



Keeping One's Place 

counted and not the recollections of things seen 
and felt? Not that of the dimness that preceded 
dawn, the bay all silver smoke, the city looming 
faintly on the hill. Not that of mornings when 
every branch was swinging in the wind, when 
there was the scurry of white clouds from the 
northeast, and little waves came spanking in 
towards shore? Or the noontide drowse of pas- 
tures, or the golden light of afternoon that tipped 
the spires of cedars and the crown of oaks as it 
came sliding down the fields? And what of the 
steady drip of rain so close above the roof, the 
fine sift of mist through open windows, the gur- 
gle of the stream beneath the stars, the rustle of 
the trees outside? As I sat that night upon my 
porch and watched the moonlight take the valley, 
I knew that I should find these hard to leave. 

Suppose then, that I abided by my choice, 
cherished it and kept it. At least I had the sense 
to know that I should be making no mistake. 
Vulgarity and commonness alone were irretriev- 
able. The more one tried to hide them, the more 
blatantly they showed. But this place of mine 
was different. It simply didn't know. It had 

[69] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

gone wrong not from any pushing wish for self- 
advancement, but from a desire to please. Surely 
if I worked with it and showed it, insinuated here 
and prodded there, it would make response. 

How cleverly it would catch on, how far it 
would outdistance me, my condescension did not 
let me guess! 

My first proposal it acceded to with little 
hesitation. If, in truth, we had lived too much 
alone and were in need of company, there was 
an easy remedy. It was in a position to spread 
out. Not much — we could not splurge. But we 
might manage a small guest room. And while 
we were about it, why not a maid's room. No 
doubt my affection had turned critical from the 
strain of doing my own work. 

And reticence, on which I had so evidently set 
my heart ! That, too, was something which might 
be easily acquired. From its own stolid point of 
view there seemed small need for hurry. Before 
we shut out prying eyes, we should ha,ve some- 
thing worthy to enclose. Still once I had made 
selection of materials, it did the manual labor. 
It built the underpinning firm with privet and 

[70] 



Keeping Ones Place 

with barberries, then turned its energies to rear- 
ing maples, willows, and small fir trees in a high 
green wall. 

But cultivation was a different matter. At 
first it couldn't get the hang of it. There was no 
telling how things worked. I hadn't seemed to 
mind its running wild. When it looked frowsy 
and unshorn, I hadn't made remarks. Even its 
gay fancy for a scarlet poppy springing up be- 
fore the steps, an ox-eyed daisy glowing in the 
path, I was apt to pardon and protect. But 
the path itself in which it had felt pride — its one 
attempt at social manners — I had avoided from 
the first. And now I was attempting to put 
that gleaming front aside and overlay it with a 
garb of weeds. Women surely had odd ways ! 

It was only when I mapped out our first 
course, a front garden binding our pretense at 
lawn — that the place awoke to interest and took 
hold. Here was a tongue that it might learn 
to speak, if I would only give it time. At least 
one winter it must have for thorough ground- 
ing in this language and a sober study of the 
roots. And sure enough by spring, it roused it- 

[71] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

self from its brown study and displayed its learn- 
ing gayly. If it had not acquired real fluency, 
it was "spelling it with flowers." 

No wonder that I felt pride in its teaching. 
No wonder that I pushed and overworked it, 
gave it no summer holiday for rest. Peonies, 
sweet-william, phlox. Those in simple forms it 
had already mastered. But there were subtleties, 
rare shades of meaning which they could not ex- 
press. Fringed pinks would add both edge and 
spice to our remarks, and iris spears a point. 
Campanulas would give a purity of diction. 
Spirea and gypsophila would veil our meaning 
by elusiveness and shy half -hints. And whj^ not 
violas for roguish chuckle and primroses for run- 
ning comment or convenient small talk? It had 
not occurred to me that the place might grow too 
voluble, that I might provoke a clamorous am- 
bition not easy to suppress. 

Proper gardens, so I soon admonished, didn't 
talk so loud. They showed that they were care- 
fully brought up. I had seen them, always on 
their good behavior, unobtrusive and controlled. 
They had silences of leaves between their bursts 

[72] 



Keeping Ones Place 

of merriment. They held in check their gayety 
by f alhng into sober moods of purple or reveries 
of blue. There were things, moreover, that when 
uttered in a tone of insolent magenta had better 
not be said. 

All very well — the answer showed precocity — 
the less one suffered from restrictions, the easier 
to be subdued. Things popped out from the very 
effort to hold in, things like those jolly prim- 
roses, unapropos beside the phlox, but quite pat 
in their own place. The trouble was this garden 
had to get a hearing all at once. If I wished for 
more than jargon, for both brilliancy and depth, 
I must give more space for utterance. How 
have any sequence of ideas, how emphasize by 
repetition, how work towards any climax in an 
impromptu speech of at the most nine feet by 
twelve? We must have extension courses before 
its public speaking could be done with any form. 

Then should I have stilled the aspirations of 
my place, with confession of my inability. Be- 
fore worst came to worst, I should have abdi- 
cated from my chair. However, I had known 
most fallible instructors who managed somehow. 

[73] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

Surely I might keep a step ahead if they could 
keep a page. Unfortunately I depended on the 
limitations of mere human energy. I did not re- 
alize that natural energy proceeds by leaps and 
bounds. Before I had grown ghb on "yellows," 
their height, their habit, and their time of bloom, 
the place had started off on its own explorations. 
It did no good to murmur "papaver nudicaule" 
and "rudbeckia." It was not going to stop for 
Latin names. There they were, the plants, their 
former pertness now transformed to joyousness 
behind a springing hedge. All right in their way. 
But what it wanted was a harder problem. Well, 
what next? 

As I faltered it came forward with its own 
suggestion. It had chanced upon its real voca- 
tion. Unknown to me it had been reaching out. 
And really I had no idea how well those seedlings 
looked against the grape-vine arbor enclosing 
the north walk. They weren't right for it of 
course. They spoke too humbly. It was just 
that fact that had given it the clew. This was a 
spot for loftiness and piety, for spires of delphin- 
ium and hollyhocks, slim tapers of white phy- 

[74] 



Keeping One s Place 

sostegia, foxglove chimes and canterbury-bells. 
And were there not platycodons and veronicas 
to bind these soberly to earth? Let's see what 
we could do with preaching against a chancel of 
green leaves. 

There was no doubt that here it felt the call. 
But before the benedictions fell, before I had 
completed my novitiate, it had turned foreign 
missionary. Restive at its cincture, it was off 
unsmocked, itinerant to proselyte among the 
neighboring fields. The great thing now was a 
revival meeting in that open plot of ground be- 
hind the house. Let's sing lustily all the old 
favorites, morning bride and mignonette, mari- 
gold and candytuft. They went better with lay 
sermons since they had a rousing burden to their 
chorus and gave a message to take home. What's 
more they were popular, they drew a crowd. 

Not long thereafter rumors of eloquence be- 
gan to go abroad. My garden has now its steady 
congregation, its increasing band of converts. 
Pilgrims even seek it from afar. Moreover, 
since they do not recognize a formal time for 
service, they drop in upon it at all hours. And 

[75] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

as I join them at the entrance, I know how they 
will greet me. There will be no personal interest 
in their comment, "I came in for a moment just 
to see your place." 

For the most part I am little jealous, proud of 
its success, and well content to serve. Meekly, I 
take part in its parochial duties. I act as verger 
without fee. In great armfuls, I distribute tracts. 
I bear its messages among the sick. By menial 
labor, I make possible its public life. But in 
such times as we are left alone, I turn unpleas- 
antly domestic. What was its humble origin, 
I beg leave to remind it. Who gave it its start? 
In spite of all its airs and graces where would 
it be without me? Not for a moment will I let 
it so outgrow me as to think it was self-made. 



[76] 



IV: Dinner With Diversions 



DUSK 

If we might have one hour to be 
Each other's silent company, 
We'd choose the gray tranquillity 
That broods in the half-light. 

When one small breeze on nimble feet, 
Left frisking with the meadow-sweet, 
Goes searching after winds more fleet 
And vanishes from sight. 

When every careless bird that sings, 
Feels purpose in its nomad wings. 
And wheels from its adventurings 
Resolved on homeward flight. 

When spider drops from dusky beam 
To weave the pattern of her dream, 
Half gossamer, half silver gleam 
Against the velvet night. 

[79] 




IV: Dijiner With 
Diversions 

TN setting forth a banquet, it was no small part 
-*• of the Elizabethan magnificence to furnish 
diversion with the feast. Enough was never as 
good to those exuberant people who accounted 
poor the pleasures that came singly, and who held 
as paupers' fare, whether it was peacock -pie or 
swan, roasted ox or venison, the bountj?^ which 
left the outer vision still unoccupied. Young in 
spirit, they ate as they lived, with a child's lusty 
appetite and half -attention ; their appetite in the 
very moment of enjoyment, racing on to further 
quest. So it was that any proper host provided 
pomp and revel, masque and pageantry, not to 

[8i] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

interrupt, but to enliven the mere business of the 
feast. 

There is, I confess it frankly, nothing Eliza- 
bethan about my fare. For the most part it is 
inspirational. At the close of work as I come in 
from my garden, my eye is caught by a crisp 
head of lettuce or by slim hanging pods as I pass 
by the beanpoles. Or again it may be at a later 
season that, as I run my hand along the corn 
stalks, I feel with a kind of ecstasy, the proper 
swell. In a few moments I am emptying out 
upon the kitchen table, the contents of full 
pockets and of apron; my selection made at the 
eleventh hour. 

Nor is there for that matter anything Eliza- 
bethan about the capacity of my enjoyment. It 
coincides exactly with the contents of my plate; 
and there is a wholeheartedness about it that no 
minstrelsy could woo. But there are times on 
summer evenings when the breeze drifts hot across 
the meadows, that I like best those pleasures of 
the outer vision, a dinner with diversions, and in 
full view of the stage. 

In my case, my point of vantage is a platform 

[82] 



Dinner With Diversions 

extended for the purpose, open to the sky and 
above a little marsh where the tide makes in until 
it has set the tall sedge grass awash beneath my 
very feet. Certain advantages it has, moreover, 
in that my table bears no marks of rank, no place 
below the salt from which to crane one's neck 
for better view. It matters not which seat you 
choose; though in one case you may look off 
upon the distant city, its spires slim and delicate, 
its windows flashing back the sun ; and more close 
at hand a stretch of water, unrippled on such 
evenings, save at the edge where you may see it 
brimming faintly to a bar of richest green. Or 
if you look off to the westward, there are mead- 
ows outlined with stone wall and thicket, rolling 
softly upwards to where a generous barn and 
wood stand out against the deepening sky. 

At first you might think my stage was empty 
and that I had come out to watch the slow pro- 
cessional of cloud and shadows; of color that 
brightens suddenly before it dies. And, in truth, 
there is much to occupy me in mere shift of scene. 
Often it is gradual, a matter of month and sea- 
son ; a change so slow that in the day time, I have 

[83] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

scarcely time to notice it. But as I sit here, if it 
is June, I become aware of a brightening to the 
sharp sedges as they push through the matted 
growth below me, or of a creamy mist upon the 
elder bushes that overhang the farther bank. It 
is here as a rule that I see the first wild rose, 
flaunting its gay pink along the water's edge; or 
in August, the transparencies of the sea-lavender 
lifted just above the tide. Here, too, with a sink- 
ing of the heart, I am first aware of the advance 
of autumn, and realize that already it has touched 
the marsh with tawny gold. There are other 
changes that come more swiftly and are a mat- 
ter of the hour. The trees lose their play of 
light. The shadows creep farther and farther 
down the hillside, sharply pointed where they 
mark the outline of the cedars, spreading fanwise 
from the roots of buttonwood or oak. Gradually 
the bay has lost its color and turned to purpHsh 
blue; and behind it, the city is marked now by 
the refulgence of its Hghts. With a sudden wink, 
the road lamps flash on ; the meadows melt to sil- 
ver ; and below me the little stream gathers dark- 
ness until a place of mystery, of soft gurgles and 

[84] 



Dinner With Diversions 

squelching noises, it runs an intermittent line of 
black. 

But all the while there has been more active 
drama, unexpected and spontaneous ; for my ac- 
tors have no more formal prompting than their 
instinct, and no notion of their cues. Often they 
will leave the stage quite empty. As often they 
will be upon it, taking possession of it with an 
onslaught from both wings. But even if they are 
absent when I take my seat, I know where to 
find them; for this little gully is a thoroughfare 
for birds who find it the clearest course to their 
nests behind my house, and for creeping things 
who use it as their mart and build their houses 
in the swale. 

Out over the bay the fishhawks are still cir- 
cling, the sweep of their great wings now dark 
against the sky, now glinting white as they soar 
aloft and catch the last splendor of the sun. 
Down they drop, sometimes to rise after a fruit- 
less plunge, sometimes to wing straight towards 
me as they make their way to the gaunt button- 
wood midway upon the hill. Often they fly so high 
that I can see only the regular beat of their great 

[85] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

pinions, but occasionally so low that for a second 
I am darkened by their shadow and make out the 
booty clutched in their crooked claws. Already 
there is a clamor from the outlook on the nest 
and an answering querulous cry. They are a 
fretful family. There is no affection in that wail 
that has just shrilled above my head. There is 
neither respect nor gratitude in the outcry that 
has brought it forth. And as the hawk in spiral 
flight, settles over her unruly brood, I can imag- 
ine the squabble that ensues over the partition 
of the meager meal. 

Better I like the kingfisher with his neat front 
and jaunty crest, who is waiting on the rock for 
his last dive. He takes his time about it and 
gives no warning. His performance is for his 
own interest, not for mine. But of a sudden there 
is an unswerving plunge, a scattering of silver, 
and he too is speeding towards me up the thor- 
oughfare. His flight is low and on a level with 
my porch. At first he does not see me. But as 
I move, he gives a rattle of defiance, a ruffling of 
his crest at my impertinence, and veers off across 
the fields. 

[86] 




<^ 










THIS LTTTtE OTT1J.T IS A THOEOtlGHFABj: FOR BIBDS. 

[87] 



Dinner With Diversions 

Now come the real lovers of twilight, the swal- 
lows at their game of tag. They are my circus 
acrobats. How they dart and circle overhead as 
though from invisible trapezes, vaulting high into 
the air, then dipping in swift flight to the very 
surface of the water, skimining it so nearly that 
I expect to see the momentary feathering of oars. 
They have marked out one of their number for 
pursuit. After him they go, light as gossamer 
until their gay chatter grows more distant and 
they have disappeared around the corner of the 
house. Back they come. This time, mad wags, 
they make me their mark and their game is to see 
how near they may approach me. Many a time I 
have been startled by their presumption and have 
fancied as they gave a sudden swerve that I have 
felt the stiff vibration of their wings. In the 
twitter that they give as they pass by me, there 
is much of the chuckling satisfaction of the per- 
former who has pulled off a clever trick. 

At this time, moreover, if the tide is low, there 
are other visitants; a pair of night herons who 
come slowly down the stream, their shoulders 
hunched, their necks close-furled, their feet lifted 

[89] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

fastidiously, for all the world like old aristocrats 
who in their old age have been forced to indulge 
in gainful toil. There is a delicate melancholy 
about their companionship, a dignity and reserve 
to their silent mood. Do they never communi- 
cate? Is theirs the silence born of understand- 
ing, or was their courtship one of those late make- 
shift affairs, based not on passion but respect? 
I think pleasantly of the jolly companionship of 
robins, their fresh undisciplined squabbles, their 
frank approaches and am sure that my elderly 
couple would take as lack of breeding, so much 
chatter of vituperation and acknowledgment of 
a mistake. 

Nor is their formality exacted only of each 
other. I, too, have paid my tribute of immobility 
and of respect. One evening as I sat late in the 
twilight, I was surprised to see a pair of great 
wings sailing towards me and a figure settle on 
the very pillar of the porch, wobbling there for 
a moment on ungainly leg. No hint did the bird 
give of his surprise at finding me, no ill-mannered 
squawk of embarrassment or of rebuke. With 
lank neck held erect, he accorded me an eye of 

[90] 



Dinner With Diversions 

gleaming red that sheathed itself suspiciously 
from time to time as though he had let up a 
screen against my observation. Nor was he to 
be hurried to unseemly flight. He stretched him- 
self to his full height, shook out his mouse-gray 
plumage. And it was only after I had had time 
to notice the green around his nostrils and the 
regularity of the white spots that circled his 
wings as though spilled there thickly from a 
paint-brush, that he gave a decorous flap and 
trailed his legs behind him in swift transforma- 
tion from gawkiness to grace. 

All the more marked in contrast with their 
dignity, is the zest with which these birds devour 
their evening meal. At the moment they have 
stationed themselves below me, where the stream 
runs swift and shallow, and stand there patient 
and ungainly, pursuing without comment their 
silent task. But let a beak strike out with light- 
ning stab and a fish be tilted up as in a vise, 
and there is real gusto to the gulp that sends him 
rippling down a shirt front. It is, however, but 
the momentary betrayal of an appetite. In a 
second the neck is again refurled, the sharp eyes 

[91] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

are watching, and the birds stand together, dusky 
silhouettes among the sedges, until they fade 
to phantoms in the twilight. 

If, on the other hand, the tide is high, their 
place is taken by the muskrat. I have never 
known the secret of his swims. Is he washed out 
of his hole by the slow rise of the tide that seeps 
httle by little into the stone wall, or does he come 
out for diversion? Leisurely he moves as though 
his exercise were pastime, now lost to view 
among the tussocks of long grass, now barging 
his waj'- among the floatage. Sometimes when 
the drift clogs the channel, he will clamber out 
upon the bank, dragging his flat naked tail be- 
hind him, and throwing off the water in dense 
spray, will sit there busily working his small paws 
at furbishing his whiskers. A solemn business 
that, and one that calls for gravity. 

Despite the sobriety with which he polishes his 
snout, his eyes have a twinkle, as though a clown 
at heart, he made a conscious joke of all efforts 
spent at foppishness. You would not think to 
see him sitting there so comfortably on his plump 
quarters that he could vanish easily. But an in- 

[92] 



Dinner With Diversions 

cautious movement on my part will send him 
scurrying for his tunnel. There will be a slap 
of the tail, a quick dive, and he will leave no 
hint of the direction he has taken. Better 
I like to leave him to his whims, to watch him 
disappear into the night, sculHng ahead with 
widening furrows left behind him. 

But as he leaves the curtain slowly falls. 
Softly it descends over the hill-tops and the val- 
ley until rustling in the nimble wind, it settles 
on the stream below. And when at last it has 
concealed my stage in shadow, the last actor 
comes upon it from one corner of the porch, in- 
visible at first, until in one tiny corner of its 
black immensity, he begins to weave with silver 
thread his delicate design. 



t93] 



V: Friendly Spying 



MY COVERLID 

Your coverlid is homespun, 

Warp and woof of loom ; 
White tassels are the flowers 

Shorn before they bloom ; 
A clipped fringe for a border. 

Primness in each fold. 
Linen, smooth, immaculate, 

It turns a body cold. 

But mine is bright in springtime, 

Stitched with thread of green. 
Slim needle buds come pricking 

Through its satin sheen. 
Adorned with lace of cobweb 

Woven in the rain. 
Is it not a coverlid 

To make a body vain? 

In summer it is motley 
Patched with every hue, 

[97] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Applique of foxglove bells, 
Snips of larkspur blue. 

Purple of campanula, 
Coreopsis spray. 

Is it not a coverlid 
To make a body gay? 

In autumn it is yellow 

Overcast with leaves, 
Orange quilt of marigold 

Spread among the sheaves. 
Dim traceries of asters 

On a tawny ground. 
Is it not a coverlid 

To keep a body sound? 

A counterpane in winter 

Made of driven snow, 
Pillowing of feathered down, 

Flounce and furbelow, 
A blanket folded over. 

Brown beneath the white. 
Is it not a coverlid 

To warm my thoughts at night? 

[98] 



A,\ ^ 




-~ /«-'=^ 



V: Friendly Spying 

IN the formal days of the eighteenth century 
every visit to a garden was a personally con- 
ducted tour. There was no dropping in and pok- 
ing about in our intrusive modern fashion; no 
roving eye caught and drawn by some glad bit 
of color, no triumph of discovery. Perspectives 
in those days were solemn matters and permitted 
of no prying. Vistas repelled all unmannerly ad- 
vances and allowed no intimacies of approach. 
One was led with decorous steps from labyrinth 

[99] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

to grotto, from grotto on to wilderness, in an 
unswerving circuit designed to prove an arti- 
ficial stimulus to varying moods. No pleasant 
progress that, made under the close scrutiny of 
a guide who found the test of one's gentility in 
one's manner of response. 

And yet it could be made with gayety; for 
there was, the story goes, a prankish gentleman 
who had access to Pope's garden from a strategic 
position at the rear, and who with every show of 
innocence and flattery would lead his guests 
through the famous Twickenham by a reversal 
of its intended order, upsetting its perspectives, 
despoiling its vistas, routing its moods, and pro- 
voking its ill-tempered little owner, "the wicked 
wasp," to sally forth to implant what proved to 
be an ineffectual sting. 

There are no formalities to my own little gar- 
den and yet I must confess I should not want 
that gentleman residing at my gates. No, not 
at either ; whether in the rear it led to wilderness, 
or in front to what in the elegance of his own 
language, he would term my "desert." I, too, 
wish to lead my guests on a personally conducted 

[lOO] 



Friendly Spying 

tour. My motive, however, is humility, not pride. 
I desire not to display, but to conceal; and the 
test is of my own gentility, not theirs. 

Am I to let them chance alone on that long 
arid stretch of iris which lines my pathway and 
which when out of bloom, despite all efforts spent 
at furbishing, is a waste of rusted spears? To 
be sure I do disclaim it as outlying territory, and 
obviously it is not under my control. Yet half 
the greeting which I call out from my doorstep 
is to distract the gaze; to lead visitors well up 
the path before they have a chance to look. Once 
there, moreover, I still try to put on blinders. 
It is a pleasant prospect, this first border, cir- 
cling from maple tree to little cedar and flanked 
all the way by a green hedge. In June, they can- 
not fail to be entranced by the anchusa, bright 
against the fir tree and showering in great sprays 
its flowers of gentian blue; or by the stretch of 
salmon pink sweet-william among which the 
campanulas hft snowy chalices and primroses 
droop their delicately tinted heads. No clash- 
ing color there, not even later when it is a mass 
of subtly blended phlox. For one not given to 

[lOl] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

restrictions, it represents an admirable effort to 
harmonize and to subdue. But it is my one fling 
at estheticism and my guests must look ahead; 
for behind them — I hope safely — is a gorgeous 
patch of zinnias. If they turn, they will ask me 
in a moment, their reproof veiled with politeness, 
if I have never tried the pastel shades. Nor will 
any protestations on my part that to me a zinnia 
bed looks peaked when it is put on diet, reinstate 
me as a person of good taste. Have they not as 
evidence against me those tawny oranges and dull 
magentas? If I like them in their garishness, 
their place is in the cutting garden, not where 
in the early morning I may see them flaunting 
in the sunlight, the bumblebees tumbling over 
their great scarlet cones. 

When my guests pass through the arch, more- 
over, and come upon my yellow border, I must 
follow close at heel. Even as it is the chances are 
that they will overlook my Iceland poppies, the 
primroses and yellow loosestrife, all proper gar- 
den flowers. Their eyes will fall with disap- 
proval on the tarnished gold of tansy or the black- 
eyed Susans which they will think have wan- 

[102] 










IT IS A PLEASAKT PROSPECT, THIS FIRST BORDER. 

[103] 



Friendly Spying 

dered in upon me from the roadside or strayed in 
from neighboring fields. I must be there to tell 
them that both were diligently sought for, lifted 
with protestations from surroundings where they 
felt themselves at home, and encouraged to ac- 
commodate themselves to a more cultivated life. 
And the blue weed in the border just beyond, first 
cousin to anchusa, but descendant of some rude 
pioneering branch. Are my guests not to know 
that at the risk of ridicule I stopped for it at a 
grimy little station, a mere place for backing and 
filling, and lifted it from the cinders in which 
with its rough hardihood it chose to hve? They 
will not see, unless I tell them, that it is needed 
by the yellow daisies; that its imcouthness and 
unconsciousness of its rough beauty, lend a con- 
trast to the daisies' airy and sophisticated grace. 
But while such arrangements for the most part 
have been planned and have reason behind their 
apparent shiftlessness, what am I to say when 
they walk through my rose garden and are halted 
by a mullein in the very center of the path? Of 
one thing I am certain : they must not treat with 
violence that stalwart sentinel. The countersign 

[105] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

I have discovered, is a friendly hand laid on its 
great stalk and woolly leaves. And while its pro- 
tection was never sought for and all unasked it 
mounted guard, now that I have grown accus- 
tomed to its sharp arrest, I should miss it from 
its post. 

So it is that no matter where my visitors may 
wander, there are matters that must he explained. 
The pea-bed that has run to poppies ! Why, they 
cannot see the vines for all the nodding heads. 
If there be a choice I tell them quickly the pref- 
erence is shown to poppies. Peas I can buy. 
They are in the market, things of barter. But 
where could I purchase those great somber blooms 
of wine dark red? No, my garden needs too 
much explanation to permit of any browsing. 
All visitors I must keep close at hand. 

But when it comes to others' gardens, with 
true perversity and little of the spirit of reci- 
procity, I like best to make my way alone. If 
I am to catch their charm, the owner must not 
be there to distract me with her pride in her 
possessions. I must chance upon her treasures 
if I am to know their worth. 

[io6] 



Friendly Spying 

I remember one time in particular when I in- 
dulged in friendly spying, while supposedly I 
was quite safe in bed. I had arrived at dusk and 
from the windows I could see no garden, only a 
stretch of lawn closely cropped in contrast to 
the marshlands which lay just beyond it, and 
twisted pines, massed dark against the evening 
sky. But in the room about me there were 
flowers which could be the product of no green- 
house; tea-roses, heliotrope, nicotiana with its 
sweet-scented stars, little vincas, dead white 
against their glossy leaves. 

I resolved that night to find them growing and 
before they were displayed, so at an early hour 
I rose and unobserved, slipped out upon the lawn. 
The mist had risen from the sea, but shreds of 
cloud still lingered in the marshlands, and the 
pine trees were cutting through their silver 
shroud. At first, however, I could not find the 
garden, not a sign of blossoms; only shrubs, 
their leaves sparkling with a myriad little jets of 
xflame. Then suddenly a heavy fragrance came 
upon me — clethra, its feathery spikes still wet 
>vith dew — and I made my way to what had 

[107] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

seemed an impenetrable hedge. There, led by- 
earthy smells and languorous perfumes, I was 
soon inside. But not even then were all the 
mysteries revealed. In a small enclosure I had 
come upon the roses, some still pointed buds, 
others cupping in their depths the radiance of ap- 
proaching day. But the garden itself was a 
labyrinth in the true sense; no mere matter of 
clipped hedges and intricate design, but fash- 
ioned out of natural growth from clethra and 
wild clematis. Elusive and provocative, they led 
me by their fragrance to what they held beyond. 
Sometimes they opened out upon a prospect of 
gold-banded lilies, their spotted petals and bronze 
stamens just unfolding to the first pale rays of 
sunlight; or upon begonias, so low the sun had 
not yet reached them and flaming like great 
moths that had ventured forth into some tropic 
twilight. At times, they closed in upon a niche 
of green where, as though left undisturbed, tall 
ferns uncurled their fronds amid a tracery of 
leaves. And suddenly, when I had grown accus- 
tomed to the dimness and the shadows, I came 
out upon the world ablaze, the sky bare and 

[io8] 



Friendly Spying 

cloudless overhead, and below me, beyond a rosy 
stretch of mallow, the glitter of the sea. 

Later in the day I revisited the garden, but 
the praise which I expressed then to my hostess 
was not for its noontide beauty as I saw it with 
her guidance, but for that which, stealthily and 
unobserved, I had chanced on earlier; beauty 
born of a magic hour. 

In these autumn days when my cottage is 
closed already for the winter, but the garden is 
still blooming as though it had laid by a store of 
gold, I like best to think about that stolen ramble. 
It gives me confidence. Is it possible that my 
own garden, which is now unguarded, has not 
needed my protection ; that chance visitors, com- 
ing in upon it from the roadside and responding 
to an invitation more confident than mine, will 
find a beauty for themselves in its haphazard 
growth ; a charm which I myself perhaps by rea- 
son of my stewardship have but half guessed. 



[109] 



VI: Solomon or Sheha? 




VI: Solomon or Sheba? 



"Neither was there any such spice as the 
Queen of Sheba gave King Solomon." 

THERE was never a question of regality — 
scarcely of identity. It was Solomon — or 
Sheba from the first. How else explain the glory 
arrayed in which our prisoner came to exile save 
as his arrogance — or hers? For no sooner had 
we pried apart the box that formed a rude in- 
carceration than there came a flash of the imperial 
scarlet from breast, from crested head-dress, and 
from flaunting train. Surely, too, the wisdom in 
the wrinkled cheeks and shrewd, cold eyes was 
either hers who came to put hard questions, — or 

[113] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

his who left no spirit in her before the half was 
told. The nose, moreover, aristocratic in its 
curving downward sweep, was unmistakably the 
son of David's — or hers of some collateral line. 

But it seemed a little academic to debate the 
problem with the triumphal march of occupation 
in full swing above our heads. Our monarch, 
flinging back the wings of a blue mantle, had 
swept off to search the confines of a narrow king- 
dom and to take possession of a throne. Thus 
was our wise concern just then court etiquette, 
the proper manner of approach and of retreat. 
Those couchings and low-crooked curtsies so 
spurned by Caesar, were, I am afraid, the very 
forms we used. We dodged the royal wrath, we 
bent before it; we quailed, I know I shook. Gone 
was our republic with its traditionary rights of 
man. Life was no longer safe. Liberty was 
threatened. "Lord God Almighty," said my 
father, as foregoing his pursuit of happiness, he 
fled upstairs. One thing alone was clear. We 
were in the grip of the relentless tyrant, subjects 
not of the mailed fist, but of the iron beak. It 
even seemed a pity that such an instrument of 

[114] 



Solomon or Sheba? 

torture should be confined to so few victims. It 
might more properly have been Inquisitorial. 
With mechanical precision, it would have wrung 
a full confession and extorted a complete return 
to faith. 

When, however, we had formed our Royal 
Household, we began to have our speculations. 
It was not that we were troubled over the suc- 
cession. Why worry over scions when the 
dynasty established was likely to outlast our 
time? But the proprieties! They set us think- 
ing! With a retinue so scarce, we were hard- 
pressed to fill all offices and allotted the appoint- 
ments as the need arose. And was it altogether 
fitting — we could not help wondering — that at 
twilight my mother should convey a sleepy 
monarch up to bed? Should she, Lady-in- Wait- 
ing, be the first to answer to all morning calls? 
Once a week, moreover, she took her station on the 
lawn, a small green watering pot her insignia of 
office. Efficiently she wielded it — still who knew 
how decorously? — as Mistress of the Bath. My 
brother had avoided all such menial duties. He 
insisted on his rights as Chamberlain, High Chan- 

[115] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

cellor, and Minister of State. It was his privilege 
to grant an audience and to present. Yet might 
he not more becomingly have installed himself as 
Knight of the Bedchamber or First Groom? 
About my father and myself, it did not much 
matter. We were the trembling populace whom 
fear makes neuter. We kept a proper distance 
from the throne. 

For the most part we were convinced that we 
were servitors of Solomon. More terrible than 
an army with banners he had come among us 
and had seized upon his kingdom with a preda- 
tory clutch. Sheba, we knew, for a lady fond 
of panoply and trappings. She would have in- 
sisted on full coronation rites, preferring a 
graceful exaltation to her chair of state to any 
greedy downward swoop. And being feminine, 
she would have striven for a personal adulation 
and have contrived to win her subjects' hearts by 
luring wile. 

Besides our sovereign's appetite was mascu- 
line. So was his thirst. Sheba would have simu- 
lated delicacj^ at the table and have sought in- 
dulgence in a woman's nibbling way between her 

[ii6] 



Solomon or Shebaf 

meals. Not so Solomon. He was not content 
with his own ever ready banquet or to be in his 
own cups. He must be in ours. We were re- 
duced to humble tasters of his fare with no safe 
social barrier below the salt. Unimpeded by his 
sweeping length of train, he progressed from 
plate to plate and course to course. And let 
there be the pop of cork, the sound of contents 
flowing, and he was close at elbow before a glass 
was filled. There was a deep intake, a guzzling 
chuckle, a roisterous head thrown back, and a 
large bead gathering on his beak. Sheba, too, 
would no doubt have liked her nip. But this was 
Solomon who stood his liquor like a man and 
guttled down a swig. 

His pastimes, also, were the traditionary ones 
of the war-lord in exile. A good part of the day 
he spent in splitting wood. Clothes-pins, spools, 
cigar boxes, tribute furnished him in desperation, 
he regarded as mere child's play. They were 
reduced to jackstraws before our backs were 
turned. What suited him exactly as fit material 
for exercise were window frames and cornices, 
banisters and doors. Indeed, had he been 

[117] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

forced to earn an honest living, he might have 
traveled as a journeyman house-wrecker with his 
kit in beak. 

But it was as a bagger of big game that he 
found his chief exhilaration. A ring of the front 
door bell was the jolly flourish that proclaimed 
the hunt was up. The old sport of routing 
Philistines! His father's blood was in him. 
David had slain his ten thousands. Then could 
not Solomon rest until he, too, had shown his 
prowess. He must secure his captives or send 
the cravens scurrying in flight. And did less 
worthy sport provide, he would content himself 
with any minion who dared pop a black face 
from the burrow below the kitchen stairs. A 
low taste and he knew it. Far different was his 
pursuing scuttle from the grand manner of his 
usual charge. It was, however, as though Balkis, 
Queen of Sheba, had left rankling the bitterness 
of an unfinished conquest, so deep-lying was 
his anger against the least member of her dusky 
race. 

Late in the afternoon with wrath expended, 
it was his habit to sit at the western window, the 

[ii8] 



Solomon or Shebaf 

sunlight robing him in the full splendor of scar- 
let and barbaric gold. With head ruffled up in 
thought or held pensively in one crooked claw, 
he formulated proverbs which were the residue 
of his old, wicked mind. They were, indeed, 
dark sayings. I could not understand the words 
of wisdom though I inclined my ear. But it was 
impossible to miss the balance, the biblical monot- 
ony of repetition, so forcible in driving home 
the truth. And who knew better the way of sin- 
ners; of those "whose feet rim to evil and make 
haste to shed blood"? 

One evening, though, the words grew suddenly 
articulate and I was troubled with a doubt. 

"Poor Solomon. Poor old Solomon. Sol- 
omon is a bad boy. Poor Sol." 

The voice was deep and gruff, yet full of a 
commiseration that decency and natural pride 
forbade to be expended on oneself. And Sol? 
The use of the absurd diminutive! A pet name 
no doubt bestowed by Sheba, in a moment of 
affection daring to make free. Was this then 
she, lamenting with that mothering instinct that 

[119] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

is always mixed with passion, the one whom she 
had loved? 

There were other reasons for so thinking. 
What of those days when she showed a zest for 
house-cleaning and set her servants by the ears? 
Solomon would have detailed his administrative 
duties. Sheba, on the contrary, was a good 
housewife, trained in domesticity. She must 
know herself how everything was run. Seated 
on the carpet sweeper, she went back and forth 
across the floors, her eye vigilant for pins or 
thread. And when apparently the rooms were 
cleaned, she would run her beak along the floor 
cracks until she had left a narrow strip of lint 
as her reminder of our laxity with dust. She 
lowered herself to supervise the scrubbing and 
was never happier than when tagging after brush 
and pail. Such times, too, as she penterated to 
the kitchen, she was in and out of everything. 
Often she inspected all the ironing and in her 
high-handed fashion cast upon the floor a gar- 
ment not turned out to the queen's taste. Or 
she sat upon a gas fixture, the very place for out- 
look, and surveyed the baking, frying, scouring 

[I20] 



Solomon or Shebaf 

that went on below. Had we been servants and 
not slaves, we should have told our mistress she 
was "nosey" and have promptly taken leave. 

Moreover, she had a daintiness about her per- 
son that would in Solomon have been offensive, 
and have marked him as a dude. On a rainy 
day she would go over her whole raiment until 
she was quite sure that it was free from blemish 
and that every feather was in place. Her azure 
mantle must fit sleek to show the curves of her 
trim figure. Her train must be spread out until 
it hung in proper folds. Since her subjects were 
dowdy even in their court dress, she herself must 
be the quintessence of finery and of good style. 

In odd contrast were her moments, sometimes 
weak and sometimes wanton, when she simply 
must be fondled and caressed. Such moods 
would have come to Solomon when the affairs 
of state were over and when legitimately he 
might seek affection as a mental rest. But they 
came at any time to Sheba as they come to every 
woman. No use to tell her that at office hours 
her demonstrations were unseemly, hampering, 
ridiculously out of place. As little to impress 

[121] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

upon her that a living must be earned for her 
provision. She refused to see that she was break- 
ing business rules. Really she was not intruding, 
she would be quite good, she wouldn't say a word, 
she only wanted to be near. And in a moment of 
persistence she had attained to her desire. Many 
a sketch has my brother made with her upon his 
shoulder. Many a page has my mother written 
with Sheba snuggled in her lap. 

It was to Solomon, however, and apparently 
absorbed in deviltry, that I told the story that 
let the secret out. 

In New York not long before, I had met a 
woman who had charmed me with the tale of 
Harry, her own pet macaw. A nice fellow was 
he, likable and democratic, and with no preten- 
sions to great place. And since he was living in 
his own tropic land where the choice was large 
and there need be no great to-do about the mat- 
ter, she had decided to set him up in housekeep- 
ing and provide him with a mate. There was 
no doubt at all that Harry was amenable. He 
was young then, and impressionable ; and before 
the introduction ended, he was deep in love. Too 

[122] 



Solomon or ShebaP 

guileless to conceal his feeling and to feign indif- 
ference, he put on his courting crest, shook out 
his plumage, and danced a "buck and wing." He 
had supposed, you see, that he had found a will- 
ing partner. Not for some time did he realize 
that she had failed to join him and that he was 
executing a pas sevl. Whether he was clumsy, 
loutish, less skilled than some earlier acquaint- 
ance, I do not know. In any case he had put 
his heart into the dance and she had fled. 

Were that all, it would be a trite story — 
scarcely worth the telling. The pathos lies in the 
memory she left behind. For had she loved 
Harry, it would have been his duty, according to 
the strange marriage vows of his own tribe, to 
relieve her of maternal cares. He, not she, would 
have had to build the nest and hover and keep 
warm the eggs. And deep down in Harry's con- 
sciousness, she had stirred all his paternal feeling. 
He wanted children — if not his own, then those 
of some one else. 

He sought the farmyard where the chances of 
adoption seemed most likely. The hens, settled 
to their duty, he drove from off their nests. Their 

[123] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

big, brown likely eggs he tried to convey to some 
shelter of his own, propelling them by beak and 
claw. Disaster naturally awaited each attempt. 
There was a crash, a spill. In despair at last 
Harry made choice of six stones, conveying 
them beneath the porch where he arranged them 
in a neat round clutch. And on these, with loss 
of voice and appetite, of temper and of plumage, 
he expended his paternity for three long weeks. 
Such faith in the Creative Power, I felt deserved 
a miracle, and not the cynicism of defeat. 

My own emotion was deeply shared by Sol- 
omon ; but at the moment I could not guess from 
the cold calculating eye turned up to mine, how 
profoundly my audience was moved. In two 
days, however, there was a marked change in 
his demeanor. It was clear that I had given 
pause for thought. Suddenly turned seer, he 
sat hunched in speculation on the banisters and 
as though darkness lent reality to visions, he 
tucked his head beneath his wing. That he was 
not asleep, I knew, for when I prodded him 
with some inducement to his old-time deviltry, 
he rebuked my trivial interruptions with a rumi- 

[124] 



Solomon or Shebaf 

nating gaze. And since I alone had been the 
cause of his unsettlement, he began to treat me 
with a caustic beak. In a snug shelter beneath 
the bed or bureau he lay in ambush for me. If 
I walked through my room, forgetful of my 
peril, there would be a sudden sally. And lucky 
was I if I won the bath-tub as a safe retreat. 

Yet never once did I hit upon the cause of 
his disturbance. It was, I thought, a mood to 
be put to flight by trickery; and with jester's 
bells, I sought to win a chuckle and a return to 
his old care-free ways. With music I sought to 
break in upon his meditations, much as his own 
father had attempted to let in a gleaming ray 
upon the darkened mind of Saul. I even danced 
before him. I danced with psalter and stringed 
instruments. Of no avail. Nor could the Court 
Physician whom I called in consultation, give 
diagnosis of the ailment. With professional pat- 
ter, he prescribed a tonic and a rest to nerves. 
And since our royal patient had grown delirious 
and wandering at night time, my brother must 
play night-nurse and keep him safe in bed. 

Then, just when our temper had turned brittle 

[125] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

and we had resolved on insurrection, the miracle 
was worked. Protesting a right mind and able 
body, Solomon declared that for the moment 
he intentionally was not himself. If formerly 
an infant had aroused him to his highest feat of 
justice, this time the mere idea of one had stirred 
him to compassion. Moved beyond belief, he had 
transformed himself to Sheba and had done his 
best for Harry. Rank had not mattered, nor had 
distance; not even sex, or the long years that 
lay between. There had been a tragic hole left 
in my story and he had proudly filled it with the 
contribution of one large, beautiful, white egg. 

But there his responsibility was ended. In 
the morning when I laid the gleaming shell be- 
fore him he eyed it without tenderness, without 
solicitude, and shook off all claim which it might 
have upon him by a firm, destructive kick. 



[126] 



VII: Job's Pool 



SOLACE 

Job's Pool. In what still mood 

Did he who wandered from the common way 

So name your solitude ? 

Misdoubting, did he guess 

That at the roots of revery there lay 

A well of bitterness ? 

Or did he stoop to hear 

Beneath the earth's corruption and decay 

A cleansing spring run clear? 



[129] 




VII: Job's Pool 



IN one of the five porches of Bethesda stood a 
sheepman who looked upon the pool with un- 
imaginative eyes. About its rim he saw a crowd 
collected, eager and expectant, and he wondered 
at the faith that drew them to this place. It was, 
you see, his sheep -pond and as such a mere con- 
venience. In the morning and at noontide and 
again at evening, he led his flock to its cool water 
and stood waiting while they drank. So did it 
lose its mystery by the very act of ownership and 
by its practical importance in the day's routine. 

[131] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Though he listened with the multitude, he could 
not hear the angel coming, and though he 
watched he could not see the swift approach. 
For what was to the pilgrims a celestial radiance, 
was to him the first white peep of dawn or sun- 
light striking a dark place. What to them was 
the firm beat of pinions, was to him the stir of 
wind that left him blinded not by vision, but by- 
dust. It was not that he was irreligious; he 
believed in miracles. His, however, he knew that 
he must seek afar. He must come upon them, 
weary, footsore, after pilgrimage. He could not 
hope to gain a benediction by sauntering down to 
his own pool from his own porch. 

Thus, though Job's Pool is but a stone's throw 
from our house, my father would not visit it by 
method so direct. Instead, on a brisk autumn 
morning, he would set forth in the opposite direc- 
tion, his pack upon his back, his stave in hand. 
Nor did he speed like Christian, too breathless 
for his soul's salvation to take pleasure by the 
way. Such ingratitude for the world's abun- 
dance he would have thought an arrogance of 
spirit, and he sauntered down the highway with 

[132] 



Job's Pool 

his eye alert for all enticements and with no pro- 
tective fingers in his ears. 

Indeed, while I walked along as the observant 
Faithful, I used to think that Christian was 
miscast. Had he only been a naturalist, with 
what rapture he would have chanced upon the 
Slough! How he would have botanized it! 
With what delight he would have catalogued its 
flora, forgetting in the joy of recognition and 
discovery all commandments laid upon him to 
preserve the straight and narrow path. Once, 
moreover, that he had made his way through the 
white flutter of buck-bean, through thrusting 
arrow-heads and slim clean sheaths of cat-tail, 
with what regret he would have reached the 
farther bank. Certainly my father made no ges- 
ture of entreaty or of supplication as he prodded 
for tight-fisted little plants that clutched the base 
of tussocks or ventured on the quagmire for small 
spreading growths. Curiosity made for his val- 
iance and he even plunged for treasure held 
remote. Nor did I hear him make a feint of 
weariness about his pack soon filled with a rich 
freight. Sometimes, to be sure, he would call me 

[133] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

forth from dalliance, but it was never for assist- 
ance or for those heartening counsels that one 
calls out safe from shore. He had found the 
elderberries thridded with a vine whose misty- 
blossoms gave out rare fragrance. He had come 
upon a gentian too exquisite to pluck. Or close 
by the culvert and buried underneath high brake, 
he had discovered wealth of hard metallic gold. 
And as I heard him call "Bidens Chrysanthe- 
moides" or "Mycania Scandens," I did not need 
his terms of praise translated to the vulgate. It 
was, I knew, another version for the cry of "Life, 
eternal hfe." 

The Hill of Difficulty, too, which Christian 
took at a slow trudge, my father made a glad 
ascent. Why not, when it ran upward with a 
rush of crimson and of russet that smoldered 
into fire against the sky. In this season of the 
year when all the world went gorgeously appar- 
eled, it was as though each growing thing com- 
bined for his elation. Blare of orange from the 
poison-ivy, blast of scarlet from the sumach, rich 
notes of gold and bronze and umber from the 
ferns along the wall, even the deep bass of purple 

[134] 



Job*s Pool 

ironweed and aster were to him like martial music. 
They gave his step a quickness and a spring, put 
an eagerness into his pulses until he scaled the 
height and stood beneath the hornbeam that was 
ruddy as old wine and crowned the hill-top, a 
triumphal arch. 

Beyond it, where among thin blowing grass, 
fall dandelions lay like sifted stars was the Del- 
icate Plain called Ease, and here my father 
walked with much content. The lure for me lay 
backward in the valley, surcharged with the full 
power of the tremendous sunshine, and in the 
gusty clouds that went speeding down the slope, 
took the bay at a fine gallop, and went racing 
out to sea. But from the gray-headed ledge, 
from stone wall and from the flowering of the 
open meadow, more intimate demands came tug- 
ging at him for response. Not always was it 
the botanist who answered, though it was he who 
always marveled at blue grass for its fine bee 
track or wild carrot for the clew it offered by its 
single fleck of blood. The man would draw him- 
self erect before the dignity of mullein and ad- 
mire its steadfastness and calm repose. And let 

[135] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

my father come upon a thistle. It was not all 
fun and still less mockery that brought him 
quickly to attention, his stave held erect in a 
salute. The fighter in him that so firmly under- 
lay his mildness, made him pay his tribute to this 
knight who took his solitary stand against the 
cattle and held his plume so valiantly erect above 
the silver spikings of his shield. And if the boy 
in him went searching milkweeds for a chrysalis 
— and found it too, green pendant to the rib of 
leaf, it was the child who would break open a full 
pod and send its gossamer afloat to the four 
winds. 

Suppose, too, a late quail called out its single 
note from By Path Meadow. Entreaty met with 
swift assurance; back and forth until all question- 
ing was stilled. Not so blithe would my father 
have whistled back his answer to the call of any 
inner voice. 

And once that I had urged him forward to 
a path close-walled with clethra and swamp blue- 
berry, I found it was no use to warn him out of 
hurly-burly, pool, and pitfall. These murky dan- 
gers from which Christian fled so piteously were 

[136] 







THE LUBE FOR ME LAY IN THE CLOUDS THAT TOOK THE BAY AT A FINE GALLOP 
AND WENT RACING OUT TO SEA. 



[137] 



Job's Pool 

the very places that he searched for; and unerring 
instinct led him to their hoard. Even turtle-head 
was worth a scramble and though he would not 
filch the casket, he would risk a tumble to look 
upon the gentian's tight locked box of blue. But 
should he catch the glimpse of scarlet robe, no 
papal guard of bush or briar could withhold him 
from a fine conference of Cardinals. He must 
see their Eminences at their sitting, though he 
was too reverent to disturb their meditations with 
a word. 

At last, however, of his own accord, he headed 
for a beech, wedged tight against a cliff and 
holding to the rocks below with silver sinuous 
roots. This beech he used to say was like some 
jolly friar with ruddy face and comfortable girth 
who understood the frailties of men and took a 
greater interest in their gossip than their sins. 
In its companionship could one talk freely, tell 
a jest, or open up a bottle, and be sure of hearing 
a quick chuckle in the leaves. 

The pine ahead was of a different order, of 
an austere brotherhood whose vows set it apart. 
To such a one, a sinner made confession not of 

[139] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

little venial errings, but of some grave cardinal 
sin that weighed upon his soul. And having eased 
himself through stern reproof and penance, he 
went forth upon his way forgetful, leaving his 
confessor brooding over the secret he had told. 
For all that my father would draw near the pine 
tree and listen to the little grieving sigh that 
went running through its boughs. 

But from the great elm that stood solitary in 
the open pasture, he preferred to keep apart. At 
a distance he could best realize the beauty of its 
holiness, see its unhurried dignity of growth, and 
feel the import of the faith that drew it upward 
in a single prayer. 

Strange that the path should slip so quickly 
down — from this mood of exaltation to a tangle 
where all was tussle, a midsummer passion, and 
hot lust. Here was flamboyancy to brightness, 
and a heavy sensuality to fragrance that was 
different from the wholesome smell of earth. 
Freebooting vines reached out, rapacious, and 
strangled with a leap, a clutch. And in the mad 
jostle and abandon that took place among them, 
the purple aster lost its comeliness, the joepye- 

[140] 



Job's Pool 

weed its delicacy. The goldenrod turned brazen 
and wore its yellow like a harlot's robe. 

Yet not ten yards beyond, it was as though we 
had stepped out of the traffic with its discordant 
jargon, into a dim cathedral, vaulted high with 
boughs and buttressed to its slender groinings 
with the trunks of trees. Dank coolness rose up 
from the floor as in a place long closed to sun- 
light. The air had ceased to breathe. And in 
the center of this silence lay a little pit-black 
pool. The ferns that grew about it were the 
very fringe of mystery for at their roots we saw 
the miracle take place. Mold and sodden leaves 
were cleansed of their decay. Softly, irresistibly, 
the creative power drew all things to itself and 
informed them with new birth. Corruption put 
on incorruption and revealed itself as means of 
the eternal life. 

Communion at this service was too profound 
for utterance. But as we stood in silence there 
together, we were bound more close in the com- 
panionship of those who acknowledge the same 
God and who rise to the same creed. 

[141] 



VIII: Garden Hospitality 



CONTENT 

The symbol of the soul, you say, 

Is that gay butterfly 
That dreams upon a scarlet phlox 

Beneath an azure sky. 

Will all the tranced ecstasy 
Which I have missed on earth. 

Be mine upon a scarlet phlox 
When my soul finds rebirth? 

Then Christian heaven is beyond 
The aim of my surprise; 

I'd rather dream on scarlet phlox 
In pagan Paradise. 



[145] 







VIII: Garden Hospitality 

rjlHERE is no doubt about it — I am not a 
-*• genial giver. From the moment that I arm 
a guest with scissors, I am acutely miserable until 
her appetite is satisfied. I offer them, indeed, 
much in the manner of a spoiled child who has 
been told that it is but courteous to share her 
playthings and who does so perfunctorily, and 
with an air of pained politeness. At first I look 

[147] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

carelessly in the opposite direction. I stir the 
earth or stiffen a stake as if that were my sole 
preoccupation. But, in reality, I am casting a 
glance over one shoulder at the depredations that 
I have invited. 

She has begun with my sweet-william, a just 
scourge to my vainglory. Will she spare that 
one of cherry-red of which I wish the seedlings? 
No, it is laid low. She has reached the variety 
called Newport Pink. At this moment I call 
her attention swiftly to the skill with which I 
have attained a continuous stretch of bloom ; but 
she has already opened up a breach. I know with- 
out turning what she will lay her hands on next. 
Just around the corner there are Iceland poppies, 
orange and scarlet. She cannot miss the nodding 
of their delicately crinkled cups. In a moment 
they are tufts of leaves. And it will be a week 
before their soft, fuzzy buds, so tightly curled 
like little fronds, will straighten out upon the 
crooked stems. 

With an eager eye for acquisitions she has come 
upon the roses — not the perpetuals of which one 
gives so gladly — but the York and Lancaster of 

[148] 



Garden Hospitality 

which there is one remaining bud. I want that 
bud! I want to see its yellow center and jaunty 
streaked face. But swiftly it disappears. By this 
time, I am at her heels. Will she never reach the 
calendulas in their first gaudy bloom and clamor- 
ing to be cropped? She has passed them for 
those she has at home; so has she bachelor's but- 
tons. And hastily she makes her way to my 
sweet-peas. 

Once there, you would think I might breathe 
freely, as indeed I might; for do not I have to 
toil twice daily to keep them giving bounty ? But 
in a moment she has snipped off a whole gadding 
vine with I know not how many buds, how much 
capacity of growth. I recognize perfectly that 
hers is the proper way to pick sweet-peas; that 
arranged in a cluster of pure color they are hid- 
eous, and that they need to nod among their own 
green leaves. But I have never had the courage 
to pick such a bouquet for myself. 

While I am merely martyred during the cus- 
tomary ravage, there are certain plants where an 
attack will transform me to Knight Templar with 
my sword unsheathed. To be sure these plants 

[149] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

seldom need armed intervention. There is a kind 
of sanctity that guards the canterbury-bells, the 
tall spires of foxglove and delphinium. They 
have a dignity that repels the invader. To fell 
them would be sacrilege indeed ! 

Once my guest has departed a keen shame sets 
in. "The gift without the giver is bare." But I 
plead, my complaint is that too much of me has 
gone out with my gift. I think, however, of a 
garden not far off. When I visit it I can scarcely 
recognize it for what it is. Hens wallow out 
their sun-baths in its midst or crane their necks 
to crop a bloom. Children romp through it care- 
lessly. There is scarcely a blossom in sight. And 
yet I have never visited it without in some mirac- 
ulous fashion leaving it full-handed. Sometimes 
it is with great bunches of California poppies 
which its owner knows I cannot grow in my clay 
soil. Sometimes it is with mignonette. In my 
father's day it was usually with some treasured 
offering that had been grown almost as it were to 
find pleasure in his sight. This garden yields 
itself as the famous pitcher yielded milk, from 
the source of hospitality abounding. 

[150] 



Garden Hospitality 

Another friend I have who is a source of much 
reproach. To be sure she has more space at her 
command, but hers is only generosity expanded. 
Almost any day she will stop her household tasks 
to take you "farming"; a delightful word in her 
own whimsical interpretation. Little enough has 
it to do with grubbing and hoeing. There are 
vegetables on her farm I know, but I have never 
seen them ; she keeps them out of sight. But once 
among her flowers she will present you with a 
basket for each arm and a formidable pair of 
scissors and lead you to a low swamp where her 
Japanese iris unfolds its crumpled flowers. Or if 
it is August, to a sunny patch where in neat long 
rows she grows her new and rare gladioli, the 
primulinus hybrids. Then she will disappear quite 
carelessly about her tasks. And when she returns 
a good half hour later to find that you have but 
helped yourself in the manner expected of your 
guests, she lays about her, until you go home 
staggering under your gay burden. 

After so much frankness I can only plead that 
much different is my own feeling when I part 
with plants. A rainy day in August is a sign that 

[151] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

he who runs may read ; and I welcome any guest 
who comes armed with box and trowel. There 
are many plants that do not comit — sweet -rocket, 
garden heliotrope, the yellow primrose. These 
are current coin. But the same sweet-william 
that I hoarded in its bloom, I can now lift 
eagerly; and the same Iceland poppies. The 
peach-blow canterbury-bells where a rash hand 
laid earlier would have routed my politeness, I 
can now spade up recklessly in great clumps each 
one of which when wedged apart would fill a 
border. Nor is the seed-bed, the inner sanctuary 
now inviolate. Here dwell mysteries, plants that 
have never flowered. Is the plant one lifts the 
Rocky Mountain columbine? Is the one that 
stays the usual dingy double purple ? No matter. 
Somewhere next June it will be expanding its 
long spurs and pendulous buds. 

So to salve my pride I have come to this con- 
clusion, that what may seem my stinginess is not 
really that. Plants from my garden you may 
have in plenty. You may even dig them your- 
self and I shall not look. I, too, will go uncon- 
cernedly about my tasks. And flowers you may 

[152] 



Garden Hospitality 

have, those which if cut will come again. But 
I offer my hospitality with restrictions. Nip it 
tenderly and as it were from the rear. Seek out 
those blossoms that perversely turn their faces 
to the wall. And on your life, touch not those 
that have lain dormant a full year to store 
vigor for their bloom. For such flowers, even 
when they are given me from others' gardens, fail 
in beauty when I know that the plant has been 
sacrificed in strength. 



[153] 



IX: Round Robin Hood's Barn 



THE HUNTRESS 

Artemis, the huntress, 

Loves all small, wild things. 
Little bears on tumbling legs. 

Birds with unfledged wings, 
Fox cubs peering out of holes 

With a strange surprise 
At the baying of her hounds 

In their puzzled eyes. 
Doe with spots on tawny flanks, 

Lion whelps at play; 
These she spares when she sets forth 

With intent to slay. 

Artemis, the huntress. 

Slays them when they're grown; 
Makes their beauty and their power 

Tribute to her own; 
Traps the lion in his lair, 

Flays him of his pelt; 

[157] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Brings the stag with antlers down 

For a doe-skin belt. 
Tiger's jagged lightning stripes. 

Panther's sleek black hide, 
She must wear as ornament, 

Robing for her pride. 

How shall I blame Artemis? — 

I, who wear a coat, 
Lined with tiny squirrel skins 

Soft at wrist and throat. 
Trimmed with beaver's borrowed warmth, 

Pretty, so I think, — 
Though I wish I could afford 

Richer gloss of mink. 

I would fi*ee a silver fox 

From the hunter's trap; 
Yet how carelessly I buy 

Beauty, for a wrap. 



[158] 




IX: Round Robin Hood's Barn 



I AM not one who would see the sun rise daily 
from beyond a new horizon or set behind a 
different verge. When it dawns above the dis- 
tant city, I consider that it is but turning in the 
proper groove; and when it disappears behind 
a ridge of cedars, I feel that it has finished out 
its proper circuit and gone becomingly to rest. 
Neither do I wish to-morrow's gift to be fresh 
woods and pastures new. I would far rather 
have the warm security of pasturelands with 
which I am familiar and, with none of the ex- 

[159] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

plorer's spirit, I would wander through them on 
those narrow cow-paths that have been thudded 
out by daily passage of the herd. For the miracle 
I wonder at is sameness and not novelty. I 
breathe quickest when I find that every stick and 
stone, every bush and tree and thicket is mar- 
velously as it was. 

So, after a winter's absence, I find a real exhil- 
aration in tugging at the gate that leads into the 
cow-lane and starting off upon a visit to old 
haunts. How much have I forgotten? Will 
remembrance come back sharply by some gaunt 
omission or gently by the presence of familiar 
scent and shape and sound? 

As I pick my way through the clutter of the 
barnyard, assurance greets me swiftly in the 
earthy smell. When have I ever failed to catch 
in this rich reek, the pungency of fever-few, and 
when on looking down, have I failed to find the 
groundmallow rounding out its little cheeses in 
this churn of muck. On either side of the straight 
way are open fields which surely some day must 
be planted to ground crops. To-day they are as 
I best remember them. Theirs is a surface yield 

[i6o] 



Round Robin Hood's Barn 

of springing corn and grain that takes the wind 
in ripples, and the shadows of the clouds above. 
And suddenly as I grow fearful of the stillness, 
there is a song of chuckling merriment and in a 
parting of the timothy, I see a bobolink's tan pate. 
I might have known that he would be there, a 
part of the June lushness, brimming the meadows 
with his song. From the high cross-yards of the 
buttonwood, a conkoree sends out his warning. 
His scarlet epaulettes must be, I think, the badge 
of some patrol; for never yet have I passed by 
his watch-tower without arousing his alarm. It 
is he who always brings to my attention the silver 
mainmast of his old square-rigger and leaves me 
wondering how late it will hang out its sails. 
Beneath, along the wall, the blackberry vines are 
putting out their long green feelers and the poi- 
son-ivy wears its summer gloss. Through their 
leaves a chipmunk scampers nimbly, turns tail, 
and disappears. I know, however, from old habit, 
that curiosity will have the best of him. Ten 
feet ahead, I shall look into some dim crevice 
and catch a bright, unwinking eye. Nor does 
the woodchuck fail me. There he is in midfield 

[i6i] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

above the same old dug-out, sitting plumply on 
his haunches with fore-paws upheld. Unvaried 
is the greeting that he gives me, a shrill whistling 
note. Never yet, moreover, have I escaped to 
open pastures before my way was blocked by the 
slow, forward browse of the returning herd. In 
all the years of our acquaintance these sober Hol- 
steins have acquired no grace of manner. My 
feet have but to come within their range of vision 
and each head lifts upward for a long, slow stare. 
With feigned stolidity they wait for the encoun- 
ter ; but as I come near there is a tentative warm 
breath, a swift withdrawal, a frantic edging to 
the further wall. In a moment horns are prod- 
ding into flanks and haunches in the effort to get 
by me. There is panic and a clumping rout. 

The field that lies behind them on the hill-top 
is a place of open sunlight and slow shadows that 
come pointing from the west. Its outer edge is 
rough and bubbly, each scar of rock concealed 
by spires of hardback and tufts of meadow-sweet. 
As I make my way among them, I am reminded 
of those wiseacres who preach philandering with 
nature as proof against a later disillusionment 

[162] 



Round Robin Hood's Barn 

and shock. They have not, they say, the courage 
for revisiting. It was their mood that tricked 
out the scene with false adornments. Imagina- 
tion tends to magnify ; and beauty recollected, is 
beauty safely kept. 

Theirs is, I think, a rare presumption. Cer- 
tainly my own imagination is not big enough to 
hold the spread of the gigantic elm tree that con- 
fronts me, nor so fine as to conceive an imitation 
of its perfect curve and droop. It cannot put 
so delicate an edge upon the blades of cedars, nor 
place below them where they flank the wall, a 
blue shadowing so cool. And how should it keep 
pace with the clouds, how conjure up a brilliance 
so intense? My memory of comeliness, of radi- 
ance, of fleetness, may well be measured with 
reahty. I dare take the risk. 

Through lawless growth of clethra and of 
button-ball, there are a hundred little cow-paths, 
intersecting, doubling, but each driving wedge- 
like backward to the pond. This pond is for 
me a place of high excitement. Suppose for 
once, I should come out from a lane of bumpy 
darkness to find it quite unoccupied, emptied of 

[163] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

the flittings, dartings, scurryings, that make up 
its busy hfe. It will not be to-day, for already 
I catch a well-known ''chip," and am upheld by 
the yellow-throat in his diminutive black mask. 
Is he the same highwayman who so ineffectually 
crossed my path last year? I am more certain 
of the catbird as an old acquaintance ; for I rec- 
ognize in his agility with notes a sudden drop to 
plaintiveness. Some years ago he heard and 
made his own the wistful song of the chewink. 
He also has acquired no knowledge of my friend- 
liness, and with one glimpse of me he stops his 
careless practicing and reiterates an expostulat- 
ing "mew." Surely, too, I have disturbed before, 
just here, a pair of redstarts; have seen their 
restlessness acquire a sudden purpose, and 
watched the female keep before me, flirting at 
me the full spread of her buff tail. Always it 
is she whose uneasiness reminds me that the pleas- 
ures of renewal are mine alone, and that I must 
move warily, if I am not to put to flight the very 
ones I seek. 

Not that I expect to get a glimpse again of 
the Carolina rail, his long beak held even with the 

[164] 




THIS POXD IS FOR ME A PLACE OP HIGH EXCITEMENT. 



[165] 



Round Robin Hood's Barn 

surface of the water, his white tail bobbing 
through the sedge. But the rock-island in the 
center has its accompaniment of turtles, their 
shells baked gray by the hot sun. On the pickerel 
and the arrow-heads, I catch already the gleam 
of iridescent wings. Where is the muskrat? 
Those are his waterways that have broken the 
green scum and pushed aside the hly-pads in a 
straight reach from dock to dock. As I keep a 
quiet place, I hear a chew and nibble and know 
where to find him by the stir and shake of grass. 
Then suddenly I recognize quite close beside me, 
an undercurrent of small sounds. Somewhere 
along the wa-ter's edge, a sandpiper is clucking 
softly to her brood. With tip and tilt of her 
small form she comes, picking her way among the 
cat -tails at a pace too rapid for her little scuttling 
balls of fluff. Were I to appear, how frantically 
would she gather them about her and how swiftly 
would they slip from sight. But she does not 
fear the taciturnity of the old bittern who for 
many years has made this pool his haunt. And 
no wonder. He is a crabbed bachelor who will 

[167] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

not lower his gaze to watch the chicks who run 
so impudently close about his yellow legs. 

Even my later presence at his side, he regards 
as no great matter for disturbance. With one 
blink of his red eye, he has decided that I am 
not worth the trouble of a flight. And this de- 
spite the fact that many a time I have been guilty 
of an intimate approach. It is his proud indif- 
ference that provokes me to such rudeness. With 
a motive not dissimilar, a barbarian reached out 
to stroke a Roman senator's white beard. 

The rest of the inhabitants have not developed 
such philosophy of fear. They stand not upon 
the order of their going, but go at once. Quickly 
the muskrat has sprung to his oars and is steering 
for the farther shore. And before I reach the 
hoof -holes at the margin, the frogs spring out 
from beneath my steps and make the pond in 
one lean dive. The kingfisher gives an angry 
rattle at invasion of his privacy and darts past 
me in a flash of blue. The turtles, always a little 
late in realizing danger, rear inquiring heads at 
the commotion. Then slipping slowly forward, 
they drop beneath the surface with a heavy plop. 

[i68] 



Round Robin Hood*s Barn 

Bubbles rise that mark the ways of swimmers 
down below. Save for the bittern who is im- 
perturbable, the pond is quite deserted. I must 
return a good hour later, if I am to find the 
drama on, the roles resumed. 

There is small cause to hnger solitary, grilling 
in the sunlight, for if I skirt a cape of swampy 
undergrowth, I shall come into a tunnel walled 
with bayberry and roofed with boughs and droop- 
ing vines. You would never think that I could 
find a break in all this tangle, and yet I know 
that I could foot it blind. Much would I miss 
of color, the flecks and shafts of sun on solemn 
green, the tawny brown in which each winter 
leaves the oak trees standing ankle deep. Yet 
by a most sweet perfume that assails me, I should 
know where the swamp azalea was blowing 
out its sticky trumpets and breaking the cool 
shadows with white gleams. And with its scent 
would come back an old association. I should 
image close below the Canadian lily lifting up 
its single scarlet cup. Moreover, where the path 
turns slippery with needles and is charged with 
resin, I should go scrambling up until I made my 

[169] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

way to my accustomed seat by the soft feel of 
moss. Surely, too, the breeze that comes so 
nimbly up this height, would carry with it much 
of the quickness and the frolic of the birch trees 
down beneath. I am glad, however, that I may 
look out upon this brilhant clearing and see the 
slim lithe trunks, the leaves so sensitive to wind 
and light. 

Their memory is too gay to carry with me on 
my backward j ourney through the woods. Under 
this vault is no snug intimacy, no small loveliness ; 
rather an apathy of gloom, a loneliness too deep 
to share. Between the colonnades there reigns 
a twilight stillness and the stir in the high 
branches is elusive and subdued. What plants 
there are, have the fragility and reticence of long 
seclusion. Set in the sun, the pipsissewa could 
not send forth so delicate a fragrance or put 
forth so shy a bloom. Something would the 
mitchella lose if forced out in the open. It 
must feel its way beneath a covering of leaves. 
The Jacks and lady-slippers, too, have an appro- 
priate sobriety in their dim luster and dress to 
a somber mood. And in contrast to the frank 

[170] 



Round Robin Hood's Barn 

dismay I met with in the open pastures, here I 
have the sense of being watched by infinite sly 
life. I may not come upon it in the trooping 
shadows. It creeps warily upon the farther side 
of some great trunk, lurks under cover, or in bur- 
row, peers at me from above. Yet though I hear 
no sound save my own deadened footfall, I know 
I am observed. 

Straight through the silence and the dimness 
runs a belt of rock, heaved up in tumult and split 
asunder in great slabs and clefts that are a miracle 
of accident and poise. Along this ridge, tradi- 
tion has it that the Indian chief, King Philip, 
dogged by the white man, sped homeward to 
Mount Hope to die. A strange sense of justice 
was it surely that condemned the body of this 
warrior to be drawn and quartered as a traitor's 
for his fierce loyalty to these, his woods. It is 
in his steps I walk ; at first along a low outcrop- 
ping, a reef washed over by the surge of leaves. 
Then as the cliff mounts, my mind begins to leap 
ahead. Somewhere to the left I remember a 
great bowlder that has sagged and slipped until 
it rests, a wedge, between high walls. I must 

[171] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

see it for its cap of bladed ferns. And just 
beyond, I shall come upon the roof of a deep 
cavern where through a gaping slice of rock, 
I may gaze down into the dripping dark- 
ness and make out, just faintly, the oven-bird on 
her high shelf. Or if I wish, I may descend and 
push through the blackness where the air is close 
and dank and cold. But best of all I like the last 
ascent, a great protruding shoulder where the 
rocks run up, a mountain range in miniature, its 
valley padded with green moss and freshened by 
the fall of tiny streams. Here I must hand my- 
self across diminutive ravines by tug at branch 
and grasp of trunk, and scramble to each higher 
ledge by the firm clutch of bush. 

At last I stand even with the tops of trees and 
look down and out upon a surge of green. In no 
other place have I had so completely the sense of 
suspension, of being held among the boughs 
and moved by wind. With each sway new 
glimpses open and before the branches close 
again, I catch the glimmer of a pool, the soft 
unfurling of an oak, the soar of one dark pine. 
Or at my feet, where the parapet drops sheer, 

[172] 



Round Robin Hood*s Barn 

I see the fierce grappling roots of trees and vines 
that scale the heights. Sometimes, too, as the 
branches lift, my spirit is lifted with them to the 
open sky. In such moments, reality gives new 
vigor to the mind's possession, freshens the color 
that has faded in a winter's memory, and restores 
a beauty that has blurred. 

No wonder that when I make my way down 
a descending trail, I have no capacity for further 
seeing — no, not even as I cross the bog for a 
glimpse of the treasures that it holds in its black 
heart. I have enough to carry with me out 
across the pastures still filled with the warmth 
and savor of the day. For what I have brought 
back is the sense of security that springs from 
great possessions; possessions not bewildering 
in their novelty or grandeur, but rich by reason 
of familiarity and the habit of past years. 



[173] 



X: Fair Game 




X: Fair Game 



"She drew herself up and looked him from top to toe." 

SO Dido at iEneas, according to Virgil who 
was a great stickler for the dignity of sex. 
Over goddesses, of course, he could not exert 
control. No use to struggle with a younger 
generation that was endowed perpetually with 
youth. They were, he admitted, buccaneers in 
courtship. Let a personable youth go strolling 
unattended, let him dispose himself to rest upon 
a hillside, and some one of them would be sure 
to take pity on him pitilessly in a way to compro- 

[177] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

mise him and sweep him off his feet. But when 
it came to women folks — ^the best of them — the 
Mantuan saw to it that they were quick to put 
presumption in its place. A glance, swift and 
sure as the arrow of chaste Artemis, was the 
weapon they employed. 

It is, I confess it frankly, an envy complex 
that makes me remember from the whole iEneid 
that sole line, ^neas awakened in me no filial 
piety. Achates no fidehty. Hector no valorous 
zest for the unequal combat. Ulysses taught no 
trippings to my tongue. But when I came to 
Dido, I was "thrilled" by her decorum. "There," 
said I, seizing on a model for my conduct, "that 
is the kind of woman I shall be." I was fifteen 
at the time and I forgot that my two stubby pig- 
tails must first be turned up and under to a crown 
of hair; that my red flannel shirt-waist and plaid 
skirt must be transformed to less serviceable and 
more alluring raiment ; that my chubbiness must 
first pass through the state of figure before it 
could attain to noble form. Exhilarated I looked 
forward to the time when I might emulate the 

[178] 



Fair Game 

fair barbarian and by a sacrosanct propriety 
make some man feel mean. 

Well, I have never done so — ^though I am a 
long way now from my first aspiration. Why, 
I cannot tell you. My intention certainly has 
been unswerving. Opportxmity has not been 
lacking. There is no reason why my presence, 
with both height and weight to lend assistance, 
should do other than command. And yet, and 
yet, ... I have drawn myself up Hke Dido 
only to feel a chuckling commotion force me to 
unbend. I have shot my arrow, that death-deal- 
ing glance, only to see it fall short of the mark 
or twinkle as it hit. And in a moment I was 
quarry and not huntress. The safeguarding of 
my dignity lay in my flight. 

Fortunately the climax of my failure was long 
withheld, though even in my college days I think 
I had an inkhng of disaster. Strange place to 
serve apprenticeship to prudery, that cool cloister 
where learning was pursued with a self -conscious- 
ness and where we set ourselves apart not with 
a vow of maidenhood, but of contempt. Gareth 
in his scullery a-burnishing his pots and pans felt 

[179] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

himself not more remote from the sharp frays 
that were to win him knighthood than I from 
those encounters where I was to queen it with 
a classic art. Yet as I look back upon the cam- 
pus, clean-swept of men save ministrants, I see 
grotesque figures against the past horizon and 
myself, breathless and startled, ignominiously on 
the run. 

This is, you are to understand, not a vaunt of 
prowess, but a confession of defeat. Boast comes 
not from the attitude of flight, but from the for- 
tune and the face of the pursuant. And imagine 
Dido picking up her train and scuttling from the 
druggist's clerk, who left her potions and love 
filters in the lower court. The fact that I ever 
saw his shuffling figure and came to know the 
patience expressed in his cadaverous face as per- 
sonal, was proof of my long distance from 
Decorum's throne. Once, moreover, that I had 
tried the blinding flash and seen it fizzle out, it 
was my glance that changed, not his. It grew 
furtive, peering. I looked before I leaped. 
Instead of passing with my academic robes afloat, 

[i8o] 







#. 




I MISSED THE WHIR OF KXIVES, THE RATTLE OF CHAINS, THE DRIVES S 
RINGIXQ CALL. 



[i8i] 



Fair Game 

I gathered them about me and slipped out by the 
back door. 

And would Dido as a damsel intent upon her 
sacrifices and their omens, have stirred the aspira- 
tions of her priest or been conscious of them if 
she had? She saw him, I feel sure, but as an inter- 
mediary who should make her hetacombs accept- 
able to jealous gods. Think you, as they smoked 
upward to the quiet heavens that he would have 
broken in upon her piety with the request that 
she breakfast with him at the "templum domes- 
ticum" next door. A sense of fitness would have 
told him that it were better to incur the wrath of 
Jove and Juno for once united though in anger, 
than to so presume. His chariot, a snug two- 
wheeler, suited modestly to his parochial duties, 
but otherwise the legendary vehicle for court- 
ship, was — he would have known — not quite the 
thing to convey her from devotions home. 

A bizarre memory comes back to me of myself, 
round-eyed in wonder at my own predicament, 
sharing at the rectory a breakfast that I had not 
known how politely to refuse. Very dark the 
room and very far removed from the bright com- 

[183] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

mon aspects of the world outside. Very bleak 
the empty table. And across it a looming figure 
still frocked in the habiliments of office — rather 
like Silenus in his coffee cups. I should like now 
to know of what during that strange inclusion in 
the morning service, I found it appropriate 
matter to converse. Of one thing I am certain; 
that when the old white horse and buggy had 
shambled to my dormitory, I sprang too quick 
for courtesy or dignity from my place of priv- 
ilege beside the Cloth. 

Where was my demeanor, where my compo- 
sure? Too late to recall them as I fluttered safe 
to my retreat. Still I had excuses and a-plenty 
with which to prop my toppled pride. The 
encounter I expected was to leap from under 
cover with a step both rash and gamesome. And 
instead it had borne down upon me in the open 
with a heavy and encumbered tread. The target 
for which I kept my arrows pointed was a gay 
sprig, at most a summer wilding. I could not — 
for very sportsmanship — have let one fly against 
such a massive bulwark of the chmxh. Now, 
however, I was on my guard and should go 

[184] 



Fair Game 

armored in my piety. It was only necessary to 
look rapt. 

But with an eye fixed vigilant upon me, it 
seemed the part of prudence not to trust too far 
the right of sanctuary. The benediction fell 
upon the multitude as I put safe space between 
me and the chancel door. The self-confidence 
of Dido was not in me. I lacked her regality 
of aspect. I wanted the assurance of her slow- 
traveling gaze. 

Far better to try graciousness, that other 
queenly attribute. Since it came more easily 
to stoop the head than rear it, I might, by conde- 
scending to grant favors, conceal my inner quak- 
ings and the tremor in my limbs. Besides in my 
next ordeal as preceptress in a Western univer- 
sity, I was not given chance for flight. A sub- 
terranean cavern was my throne room. Here 
with my sole barricade my desk, I must sit imper- 
ative, grant interviews, and levy tax of daily 
themes. I could not abdicate. There was no 
egress save where my servitors came crowding 
through the door. Indeed, my bleak cellar vault 
was so devoid of all appurtenances — is not that 

[185] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

the name for royal furnishings? — ^that I could 
not even step behind the arras. Turn where I 
would, I had my back against a white-washed 
wall. 

I shall not forget the first time that I passed 
within to grant an audience. A mob awaited me 
that had no thought of breaking into serried 
ranks at my approach. Caps fluttered not in doff 
and flourish. Rather as a gay salute above my 
head and often perilously near. I was, it seems, 
a "dame," a "queen." Doubtful titles when con- 
ferred with such rejoicing upon the evident 
approachability of my young years. But after 
all my business was to administer the King's 
English. By precept and example I might make 
clear the doubtful meaning of the terms. And 
wise provision — in the case of failure I might 
pronounce sentence of exile or of execution, for 
the reins of government were in my hands. 
Surely though, for the moment it was wiser with 
these roguish faces all about me, to err a little 
on the side of clemency, to try first to win my 
people by my leniency and my compassion. Even 
Dido had her melting moods. 

[i86] 



Fair Game 

My brief reign was, in short, an era of good 
feeling until abruptly terminated by a council of 
the larger powers. 

Now of us two, Dido and I, I paid the higher 
price for my capitulate humanity. The Cartha- 
ginian queen, when once she won to Hades found 
a splendid isolation waiting for her where con- 
spicuously aloof and with no appeasements for 
the easy conscience of iEneas, she might still 
uphold her desperate pride. But as tutor I went 
into exile also in a plutocratic region, where I 
lived a wandering shade somewhere between 
an upper and a lower world. And in this indef- 
inite twilight, I had not even an allotted place. 
I was supposed to hover, delicate and indeter- 
minate. Whenever I was chanced upon, I was 
conveniently to fade away or merge. Yet even so 
my fancy did not lose its knack at quick embellish- 
ment. Romantically I viewed myself. Where 
all else was positive, to be negative was, I felt, 
to go conspicuously attired. Who knew? I 
might attract a dangerous attention by the mouse- 
colored robes of my obliterating tact. Then 
would not the eldest son, a languid exquisite, 

[187] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

grow mettlesome ? Then would he not rouse him- 
self from feigned indifference, and choosing 
so to speak, the leaden casket, give and hazard 
all he had? And with what clemency and high 
disdain — I had not decided which — should I be 
led to spurn my glittering chance. 

Daydreaming I was caught. It was not the 
scion, but the butler who took flame from my 
quiet dignity, and stepped forth from the pantry 
to champion my cause. Had not stout hearts 
once beat beneath the weight of breastplates? 
Then why should I suppose his paralyzed to a 
mechanical inertia by a mere starched front? It 
was moved kindly from the first by my impris- 
oned youth. Constant were his little acts of lib- 
eration. Sometimes a nosegay from the garden 
where flowers were not to pluck. Sometimes a 
tidbit from the kitchen where he ruled as Chanti- 
cleer. Sometimes a shilling-shocker from the 
library that circulated below stairs. And all 
proffered with impassive mien, silently, obse- 
quiously, with no comment for offense. How 
should I suspect I had a "follower" even when 
one day upon a solitary ramble, I heard his hur- 

[i88] 



Fair Game 

ried, overtaking steps? It was for something 
which apparently I had forgotten that I slowed 
my pace. 

"I thought," he said, "you might be lonely 
going." And before I knew it, he had fallen into 
step. 

There seemed no two ways about acceptance 
of his conduct. Not as an upstart surely could 
I rebuke so grave and dignified a cavalier. Nor 
as we walked out along the country roads did I 
regret my escort. For in him, of all men alone, 
I foimd the humble attitude which I, in emulat- 
ing Dido, had so zealously desired. At the same 
time I recognized the tristful prelude to depar- 
ture. On the morrow I must again assume the 
attitude of flight. 

But it was at Touisset, a place of small adven- 
ture, that the ultimate irony took place. Its hero 
this time was a farm-hand, a Portuguese of 
roguish, impudent good looks, who delighted in 
what undeniably was his, and in a spendthrift 
way that would have put Narcissus as a niggard 
quite to shame. Seated upon a load of hay, he 
was elate upon a throne; and the quick-flashing 

[189] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

smiles which he dispensed along the highway were 
the largess of a generous king. Indeed, as he 
drove his plowshare through the field behind our 
house, or charioteered his steeds in a round in- 
closing course, I must confess that I took pleas- 
ure in him as part of the primitive beauty of the 
landscape. He was eloquent of the rich and un- 
tamed vigor of the earth. But I protest not once 
had it occurred to me to detach him as a person 
from the scene. 

Still of his drama that was so ignominiously 
to include me, I was aware with just the tail-end 
corner of my eye. In the hot, sultry morn, I 
had seen him drive into the meadow, ripe for 
mowing with a clattering of his machine and a 
loud heartening of his steeds. And for a space, 
I had paused to watch the timothy as it fell over 
stiffly in broad silver swathes. But later as I 
worked about my place, I was disturbed by 
unaccustomed stillness. I missed the whir of 
knives, the rattle of the chains, the driver's ring- 
ing calls. Then looking out I saw the horses 
standing idle munching, belly deep in grass, what 
should have been a winter meal. From the cool 

[190] 



Fair Game 

gloom beneath a distant cedar, I heard, more 
over, the sound of mellow, careless laughter and 
saw the flutter of white skirt. 

Well, why not? Hay-making and love-mak- 
ing went ever arm in arm together since tillage 
first began. The work fared better for admiring 
eyes that watched the prowess, for the snack 
brought to the bars, for the cool drink offered as 
excuse for dilly-dally and an hour's repose. 

In this field, however, love-making had the best 
of it. At eve the shadows fell across a rippling 
sea of green. And not for three days was the 
summer idyling interrupted; were the culprits 
caught. 

The first herald of disaster was a rap upon my 
door. Had I seen Manuel? His master's eye 
was humorously upon me. Not since early morn- 
ing when we had passed the time of day. Where 
was the fellow anyhow? I supposed he must 
be knocking off for lunch. Knocking off from 
what? A contemptuous gesture took in the whole 
upstanding field of grain. Still, soft-hearted 
towards young romance, I did my best for the 

[191] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

rapscallion, not guessing how completely I had 
been made to serve. 

His master gave a chuckle of derision at the 
zealousness of my defense. It did not equal in 
conviction Manuel's own. Could I guess what 
the rogue had answered when he was accused of 
sloth? I shook my head, but the appropriate 
gesture would have been to shield my face. 

It was not the heat that he had offered as 
excuse, not the whole back-and-forward length 
of burning course. Such would have been reflec- 
tion on his manly vigor. It was, so he had 
claimed, my own impending interest that has 
stayed his hand and clogged his wheels; the en- 
cumbrance of what was after all a very natural 
tribute. How could he "^rk when I came out to 
talk? I could imagine the explanatory shrug of 
his broad shoulders. Certainly the full implica- 
tion of his grudging courtesy, his master made 
quite clear to me with a shrewd Yankee twinkle 
that took for granted my enjoyment of the joke. 

My quick answer was to point to where a dis- 
tant figure in blue jeans lay stretched at length 
beneath the tree, engaged if I might judge in 

[192] 



Fair Game 

pleasant dalliance. Retribution I delivered over, 
but I sped it on its course. 

All mji;hology, however, this daring act had 
tinted for me with new colors. The goddesses, 
flushed so wantonly in all their amorous histories, 
I now saw chaste of hue, downcast, and modest- 
pale. Their lovers, self -professed and known to 
be obedient only to divine solicitations, I knew 
for tricksters, hypocrites, and cheats. Father 
Anchises, reverend patriarch! He had been 
frisking with some rustic in a daisy-field, not led 
by any Queen of Love to meadows set with 
asphodel. Endymion, that shy, gauche youth 
who drooped before the moon's advance. He had 
slept snug beneath some cottage roof, not out 
upon a dewy hillside where Artemis had held him 
captive by her beams. And I by right of my 
humiliation now stood firm with Venus and with 
Artemis, those innocent celestials. Of such stuff 
as theirs, at least, was my last legend made. 



[193] 



XI: Garden Airs and Graces 



TRIBUTE 

I can afford some modesty 

With Patsy by my side; 
He'll never let my garden droop 

For lack of proper pride. 

He makes inspection of the sprays 

While I toil at the roots. 
Say I, "They're doing fairly well." 

Says he, "Now ain't they beauts." 

The salmon phlox and larkspur blue 

Cause us astonishment. 
Say I, "They're making a fine show." 

Says he, "They'll raise the rent." 

When mullein throws out blood red stars 

From leaves all silver A'^hite, 
Say I, "I like a silky pink." 

Says he, "My fav-o-rite." 

[197] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

If York and Lancaster blooms full, 

We wonder at our luck. 
Say I, "It has eight perfect buds." 

Says he, "Each worth a buck." 

And when we ask the neighbors in, 
I mix my boast with leaven. 

Say I, "The garden's at its height." 
Says Patsy, "Come see heaven." 



[198] 




XI: Garden Airs and Graces 



I HAVE no pride in my personal appearance. 
At least I can endure such comments on it 
as are made for my own good. You need only tell 
me that my petticoat is hanging to see how pleas- 
antly I will say "thank you" and depart for rem- 
edies upstairs. Or you may pick a thread from off 
my coat, shp a button into place, tuck in a hair- 
pin, and you will not see me flinch from under 
your corrective hand. Even when you inform 

[199] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

me that my hat has shpped back on my head — a 
sure sign of advancing years — I will let you 
bring it forward to the proper youthful tilt. 

But when it comes to pride in the appearance 
of my garden, that is a different matter! You 
had best not wound it. There is no remedy to 
bring quick healing and each slight will leave 
a scar. I know ; for my vanity quite consciously 
divides all visitors into those who show me garden 
graces and those who show me garden airs. 

It is easy to tell one of the toplofty in her first 
surveyal of my place. As I stand beside her, I 
may watch the deadly working of her glance. 
Each quarrelsome, bold color starts to blare its 
challenge at her loudly. Each soft mediating 
hue, in an effort to escape, goes colorless and 
drab. And every plant at once becomes "vul- 
garis," not "splendens" or "elegans" as I had 
fondly hoped. Before her is a bed of German 
iris, its pennants shifting out of saffron into 
lavender, then deepening into purple and ma- 
roon. There is, I know, nothing rare in these 
varieties ; and yet I had not thought that princes 
met in conclave lost anything of royal blood. 
[200] 



Garden Airs and Graces 

They remind her, however, only of her recent 
acquisition. Have I tried the "pallida dal- 
matica" ? It has much more distinction. Indeed, 
she has dispensed with German iris. Had she 
known that I still grew it, she would have sent 
me down some roots. And my spirea, that I 
grow as an edging, with a liking for its little 
feathered tufts. How it dwarfs and dwindles in 
her sight. The thing to get is that new hybrid — 
Alexandria — it makes a better showing with its 
rosy sprays. Or her eye turns to my columbines, 
a hundred nodding heads of palest yellow, 
lavender, and pink. Despite the beauty of their 
upturned faces, she detects a shortening to their 
spurs. How quickly plants run out; and a 
kindly prompting makes her tell me where she 
gets her seed. It is the same with the sweet- 
william. She sees that I have striven for a bed 
of Newport pink; a lovely color to my way of 
thinking when lightened by the sprays of white 
campanula and softened by small violas that 
run below it in a band of mauve. But there is 
one clump that has reverted, gathering in the 
greedy way it has a sprig of every colored bloom 

[201] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

into one head. Why don't I pull it out ? 1 pro- 
test with little hope of understanding that I 
never lift a plant in flower. I dare not tell the 
truth that I have taken an odd liking to this 
mixed bouquet. 

Perhaps instead, a little later in the season, she 
confronts the larkspur which I have grown so 
patiently from seed. There is, so far as I can 
see, no lack of beautj^ to its blueness that ranges 
from the azure of a noonday sky to the dull pur- 
ple of shadows falhng somberly at dusk. Her 
one comment, however, is to ask me, if I have 
ever thought of sending over to Lemoine. She 
has found his French seed so satisfactory in pro- 
ducing new varieties and, just for a start, she 
may be able to spare me a few plants. Inevitably, 
she is a person with a preference for double flow- 
ers. She would muffle up my canterbury-bells 
in whose great dusky cups the pollened clappers 
lie so lightly. The rosettes of hollyhocks, re- 
flexed in such fine curves, so delicately fluted, she 
would have resemble the artificial pompons of a 
Pierrot. Even the petticoats of single poppies 
are too frank in their allure. She would turn a 

[202] 



Garden Airs and Graces 

gypsy to a ballet dancer, overskirted, crinolined, 
befrilled. Nothing will she have as God designed 
it, in simplicity. It must be improved into a sea- 
son's novelty by hand of man. 

You may imagine then that her own taste in 
beauty is one based on size. No doubt wisely, it 
had not occurred to me to put a yard stick to my 
zinnias. It was enough for me that they had 
bloomed in other colors than magenta, and I had 
felt relief when each tight bud disclosed itself as 
ivory, a rich canary yellow, salmon, or dull pink. 
But she has measured hers, and though I may not 
believe it — they are each a good six inches ; Mam- 
moths, curled and crested are the variety she gets. 
She does not need to inform me what she thinks 
of my sweet -peas. I, too, long ago succumbed to 
Giant Spencers, and there they are, great butter- 
flies atilt upon the vines. Still close by I grow 
the old varieties that yield so much more perfume 
from their smaller hooded bloom. The Lady 
Grizel Hamilton with fragrance in her very 
name! I cannot save her from a snub. I wish, 
moreover, if it is their season, that I might keep 
my new gladioli close-hidden. I like them not 

[203] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

too tropical and in ordering pass over those 
starred as an extra size. Yet in a moment I shall 
see, not the slender grace that I have sought for, 
but the ruffled hugeness that there should have 
been. My friend's, of course, are a prize mixture 
and gold-medaled. Why, she has had to stake 
each plant. 

But in late summer it is my dahlias that suffer 
most from condescension. Hers are her hobby. 
She grows them with the greatest care, with such 
selection, with such rigorous exclusion of those 
which have not toed the mark. And the result! 
Each plant, its stalk as big as her own arm, yields 
exhibition flowers. Not, I am to understand, the 
old varieties, but those not yet upon the market 
and secured by hook and crook. With mine, she 
long ago cut her acquaintanceship. Lady Car- 
michael! I learn that she has grown plebeian for 
all her high-bred air and golden gown. And 
Queen Wilhelmina! Clad in white samite, she 
looks entirely regal, yet for all that a high tri- 
bunal has voted her dethroned. No wonder that 
I give the shelter of my back to Bobby, that 
perennial urchin who every summer sticks up his 

[204], 



Garden Airs and Graces 

round head to show he is not crowded out. In all 
my wealth of bloom, I grow only two varieties 
which this connoisseur has in her garden. You 
will not be surprised to learn that they are a 
scarlet British Lion and an apoplectic Mil- 
lionaire. 

Well, dahlias aren't my hobby. The thick 
stuff of their petals is to me as inappropriate as 
felt hats worn in summer, and I only like them 
in the autumn months. But about the weakness 
of my own clay soil, I am as sensitive as though 
it were a personal defect. Like a cripple, I at- 
tempt to hide it, displaying my full strength in 
peonies, in phlox, in all rank growers, so that you 
may not guess how much I miss of grace. At 
once this friend of mine perceives that I go halt- 
ing. Do I never use gypsophila to soften my 
effects? She has found it useful in veiling a 
crude color, like that of my salmon phlox, for 
instance, that needs to be subdued. Or I might 
try lavender. It gives such subtlety with its 
fine mists. Unluckily mine has never reached 
precipitation and I must use globe-thistle, platy- 
codons, and veronicas to give more solid shadow- 

[205] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

ing of gray or blue. And snapdragon! Do I 
never grow it? Quite as though I had not tried 
a hundred times for a gaudy-sunset colored bed 
of coral and of amber, and with such pitiful few 
gleams. How odd! She has no trouble with it, 
nor with salpiglossis, another of my failures. 
She cuts great bowlsful of them every day. 
There, too, against the dark green of the hedge 
and among the sky blue of delphiniums she spies 
the right place for Madonna lilies. And I, too, 
have spied them there in my imagination, but I 
may not translate them into facts. Hers again 
increase if anything too rapidly. She has to give 
away whole baskets of their little corms. 

No wonder with such wealth in mind, she is 
surprised at coming to the end of my small gar- 
den. "Is that all?" she questions. "Oh, that next 
border is your neighbor's." Then back we come 
by the same path. 

Now is the time for giving me prescriptions 
and sound advice on questions of the common 
weal. My roses should not be grown in and out 
of other plants that take their nourishment and 
they would do far better for harsh pruning to a 

[206] 



Garden Airs and Graces 

central bud. My iris needs transplanting. 
Surely I can see that its tuberous roots have 
crowded to the surface in the search for space. 
Phlox needs to be divided j^early, if I am to keep 
grass from its roots. And she hopes that I won't 
mind. She can't resist a weed. There! Out it 
comes, yanking with it a whole tuft of columbine. 
Then as she thrusts back a naked root, her eye is 
caught by a suspicious silvering on the larkspur's 
lower leaves. Mildew ! And in her bated breath 
there is the horror of pestilence and death. 
What a pity that my plants are done for. But 
possibly I maj^ still save them by administering 
Bordeaux. That's good, too, for rust on holly- 
hocks. She has noticed that mine have it. Hers 
she has kept safe from taint. 

Before she can go further, I turn her to the 
praise of her own garden and save the remnants 
of my own. An act of malice, envy, and bad 
temper, I admit it. Had she come to rifle me, 
I should forgive her. I could bail out a robber 
for the compliment he paid me by his act of theft. 
But how be generous to one who passes by your 

[207] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

gold as trumpery and leaves a tarnish on your 
heap of coin? 

Fortunately for my pride I have another 
friend whose visitation is an act of grace. How 
swift she is to understand my problems and the 
goal towards which I work. My front garden 
she remembers as a place of bleakness and of 
grilling sunlight. How then have I transformed 
it to this dim retreat ? The gloss of willows, the 
shadowing from maple and from fir tree will not 
alone account for a breath of freshness and of 
coolness like the breath of woods. And at once 
she sees that the hint is not accidental; that here 
I have chosen plants not only for their delicacy, 
but their fragrance ; not for their intrinsic beauty, 
but for the associations they suggest. Campan- 
ulas and primroses, starry in their whiteness. 
So pale anemones add depth to forest gloom. 
Purple columbines, too heavy and too dingy in 
the sunlight, lend a richness to the shadows and 
an appropriateness to the little blades of ferns. 
And planted close about the pool, the English 
iris speaks the hidden moistness of the swamp. 
Any one would think of using foxgloves ; but how 

[208] 



Garden Airs and Graces 

had I guessed that valerian transferred from the 
open border would acquire the delicate trans- 
parency of meadow-rue; or that sweet-rocket, a 
drift of mauve beneath the willow, has the same 
light fluttering grace of wild geranium, that al- 
ways blows in the half -shade. Even the sudden 
blue of the anchusa, I need not explain to her. 
She knows it plays the part of sky glimpsed 
through the tops of trees. 

It is thus with a feeling of elation and of con- 
fidence that I persuade her forward from so- 
briety to the sunny stretch of color that flows 
backward from my house. Here I may set her 
free of guidance and be sure she will find com- 
pany; for to her no flower is dowdy because it is 
old-fashioned, or vulgar because common, or poor 
if it but does its part. I prefer, however, to fol- 
low at her heels, waiting on her quick discoveries 
and her slow loitering, and finding all the while 
a pleasurable freshness in my handiwork as seen 
through her enchanted eyes. 

Her first comment is a chuckle at my obedience 
to fashion. So I too like yellow — that discarded 
color; yet not so bravely that I do not keep my 

[209] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

fancy hid. She would flaunt such Iceland pop- 
pies, their flame crinkling through spirea and 
anthemis so that it leaps more vivid in contrast 
to cool whiteness and pale buff. And surely 
columbine — a rare canary, the primroses and 
golden iris are not so shameful that I must con- 
ceal illicit fondness for them behind a high green 
hedge. I protest with news of the late comers 
who will be my give-aways; hypericums that 
force a gay disclosure, rudbekia that for all their 
single petals, make a brazen proclamation to the 
sky. But she will not be convinced of me as a 
great lover until she finds that I have given blue 
anchusa to enhance the beauty of a yellow briar 
rose. 

Fortunately she finds other combinations that 
grow to prove a greater hardihood and these she 
eagerly commends. If it so happens that her 
visit is in early June, there are the Oriental pop- 
pies, their silver caps a-tumble on staid spires of 
lupin or caught in their fall by delicate five- 
fingered leaves. She, too, has Victoria Louise, 
though she cannot resist a fallen petal and 
spreads out on her palm its sheen of salmon 

[210] 



Garden Airs and Graces 

splotched with black. But how came I by its 
neighbor which is new to her? How well its deep 
maroon tones down the brilliance of the others to 
the pui'ple lupin hoods below. Mahoney, is it? 
It ought at least to be Prince Regent. For its 
rebuke to gayety she would call it, John of Gaunt. 
Or perhaps instead she stops before a group of 
peonies. They came from my father's garden 
and you might call old-fashioned, their rich, glow- 
ing red. But was it art or accident, she asks me, 
that placed beside them the perennial corn- 
flowers that have caught the crimson just above 
them in their shaggy disks? She professes, too, 
that she would never dare to try her hand at my 
long border where my courage lies in my re- 
straint. Have I the faith to think that in all 
those lavenders and pinks a magenta is not lurk- 
ing, or that a hectic rose will never spread through 
the cool pinks? All very well, now that I have 
columbine to help me. It is a mediator despite its 
spurs. Yet let the phlox once come into its own 
and she will wager that I have a quarrel on my 
hands. She has, however, a long pause for the 
rising mist of garden heliotrope, for clumps of 

[211] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

white and purple iris, for the thridding of spiced 
pinks and tufted pansies that is my signal of 
success. 

Better still I like to have her come upon my 
favorites, so inevitably do they prove her own. 
No hybrid perpetual in the market can compare 
in fineness with the damask rose. Let Frau Karl 
Droschky lift her wax white petals. She is too 
immoderate and too soulless in her chastity. So 
is the Lady Alice Stanley too arrogant in her re- 
serves. Even Ophelia will go mincing beside this 
thoroughbred of old colonial gardens, with her 
light yielding grace and frank simplicity of heart. 
Surely, too, it is not the flavor of a name that 
gives its bravery to York and Lancaster. With 
what a swagger, it displays its badge of blood! 
At the same time, my friend feels as I do my- 
self, that roses I could best spare from my gar- 
den. Much would it lose of richness. But to do 
without campanula would be to extinguish all its 
starry lights. Without the columbine it would 
lose all its dancing gayety, and without the lark- 
spur, aspiration. For sense of humor it must 
have the chuckle of the violas. And how might 

[212] 



Garden Airs and Graces 

it keep its mystery without the opium poppies 
that hold strange dreams close-curtained in their 
folds. My friend, in short, has caught the spirit 
of my garden and does not see its failui'es for 
the quickness of its charm. 

To such a one I offer all my bounty and care 
not how lavishly she helps herself. At the same 
time I am not surprised by her last act of 
courtesy, which is refusal. To sheer off bloom, 
would be to spoil her vision of my garden. In 
the autumn she will hope for a remembrance. 
Her present compliment she pays by making out 
for reference a list of all the seeds and roots 
which she desires. 



[213] 



XII: Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 




XII: Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

WE live each summer threatened with inva- 
sion. On the side where danger lies we 
are protected for a little by a marshy inlet, a 
moat flooded at full tide. But just where it 
passes out from under the high rampart of our 
wall and makes its way into the hostile country, 
it widens suddenly and is lost among the open 
fields. 

[217] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

Here, knee-deep among the brackish pools or 
at their ease among the meadow bowlders, the 
enemy, a tribe of Holsteins, are encamped. Their 
concern apparently is in their cud, and you would 
never guess that they were laying siege. There 
is not even speculation in their mild glance. It is 
demurely innocent of all design and speaks 
placidity, not patience. If, however, you go far- 
ther through the orchard and look over its tum- 
bling barricade, you will see a narrow wavering 
path that is the sign of their unceasing vigilance. 
What time that path is worn I have never made 
discovery. I cannot catch my adversaries at their 
spying. But I suspect on starlit nights they 
keep their scouts on duty, beating their way 
among the bayberries until at last they come 
upon a breach. For usually it is at dawn that I 
hear a blast of bellowing which is the signal of 
an onslaught, or a trimnphant proclamation of 
success. 

Unarmed and unaccoutered, I leap to the en- 
counter, and as I plunge through dripping grass 
with hoe or rake already couched for combat, my 
anger rises high against my landlord who is 

[218] 



Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

keeper of the gate. His duty it is to repair my 
fortress and to make it safe against assault. For 
a moment I resolve in malice to turn the tide of 
war against him, and by a swift flanking move- 
ment to send the enemy scattering through his 
cornfield, destruction in the wake of thudding 
hoofs. Full tilt I charge. But as I come upon 
the foe, the spoils still sweet upon their tongues, 
I am brought up short by the shock of their 
reproachful stare. Where there should be dis- 
may and guilty rout, there is only confidence. 
Once they have seen who it is that shouts at them 
with lusty lungs, they fall again to cropping. 
And in the very friendliness with which they take 
my prods, I know myself for an arch-traitor. 
Never would they have raised their heads so high 
in aspiration, had it not been for our stolen meet- 
ings; had I not discovered to them the riches of 
our kingdom ; and let them savor furtively of the 
wealth behind its walls. 

My betrayal is not a matter of intention. I 
have the missionary spirit, not the Christian. I 
like to give, not share. Self-consciously I dole 
out bounty, and supposedly from the safe 

[219] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

abundance of my own preserves. Awake, more- 
over, to the insurgency of knowledge, I start each 
summer resolute that I shall have no dealings 
with these upstarts; that ignorance shall be the 
price of past presumptions. They shall nip the 
bristling tops from little cedars or munch their 
field grass as though there were no better food. 
But at last there comes a day when the first 
peas are shelled. As they drum into the pan and 
I feel them spring from under my prying fingers, 
temptation stirs. How green and luscious they 
look, those tight round jackets as they glisten 
in the sunlight. How eagerly would they be 
snuffed up; how searchingly each long rough 
tongue would curl for the last pod. Before I 
know it, I have stowed them in my basket and 
am off to make my overtui*es. Warily my trip 
is made and with avoidance of all open places. 
For let me come within the range of kitchen 
windows and I shall meet with sharp arrest. 
But at length, after careful reconnoitering, I 
reach a place protected by a grove of maples, 
and seated on the top of an embankment, I spread 
my bait enticingly upon my lap. 

[220] 




^C^9)\-- 



SEATED ON THE TOP OF AN EMBANKMKNT, I SPREAD MY BAIT ENTTCINGLY UPON 
MY LAP. 



[221] 



Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

At first I have to do some courting. Under 
the shade of a big oak the enemy are standing, 
their heads drowsed forward; and though as I 
appear they come quickly to attention, they rec- 
ognize no flag of truce. Nor is their conquest 
to be made by a mellifluous call. Their bare, 
bright world of hillside and of lowland pastures 
has contained few human beings save their owner, 
whose voice on his chance visits is one of gruff 
command. But as I lift a handful of the pods 
and scatter them below me, they catch the flash 
of green and recognize the signal with an arrested 
gaze. Their ears prick forward with a strange 
slow wonderment. There is a pause, low mutter- 
ings of confidence, and at last the first ambas- 
sador steps forth. 

Timidly she comes, with nostrils wide for the 
first scent of danger, though flinging back from 
time to time a look of high disdain for the craven 
hearts who will not even follow at her heels. 
She stops midway and to conceal an ebb in cour- 
age, falls to cropping or lets the spikes of a scrub 
apple tree rake along her legs. But despite her 
halts the glamour of adventure is upon her, and 

[223] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

she will not cease her solitary march until she 
has investigated the terms laid down in my glanc- 
ing heap. At last she is within my range and 
pauses there for parley, the sunlight hot upon 
her glossy flanks. Once, however, that she has 
accepted my silence for safe conduct, her head 
goes down and a cautious breathing faintly stirs 
the pods. In a moment her stertorous snuffle 
is followed by a gulp, and soon I hear the steady 
crunch of fresh young green. From then on she 
has no eyes for me. It is only when her earthen 
platter is swept clean that she lifts a solemn, 
eager face to mine and proclaims with the last 
ruminating mouthful that a compact has been 
sealed. 

By the next morning confidence has spread. 
No sooner do I appear upon the parapet than 
I am hailed by all the host. This time my ambas- 
sador transforms herself to general and with a 
new swagger comes attended by a cavalcade in 
single file. She is a stern believer in ofiicialdom, 
and once she has her head deep in my basket, she 
insists as ranking officer upon sole rights. Her 
staff may only salvage what she lets fall. If 

[224] 



Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

they so much as crowd around her in their maneu- 
vering for place, she administers a reprimand by 
kick or butt. Such autocracy is not to be endured. 
Insubordination follows and in a few days by 
mass formation they reduce her to the ranks. 
The old marching order gives place to a wild 
charge in which all leadership is gained by wind. 
And as I recognize myself as the object of this 
jostling tumult, I make a swift retreat behind my 
breastwork and receive it with a solid wall 
between. 

From now on my effort is to conceal my per- 
fidy. I cannot teach the enemy that ours is a 
secret treaty and to be pursued by stealth. They 
are barbarians, innocent of diplomatic knowledge, 
and at a glimpse of me they will proclaim con- 
spiracy to the four winds. Let it be borne from 
the south and it will reach headquarters. I shall 
be court-martialed, broke, confined. So it is that 
I attempt to silence their accusing voice. 

And indeed I might well silence it forever. 
For as peas grow scarce, I reenforce myself with 
apples, early wind-falls crammed into bulging 
pockets. Dangerous fare they look, as I bring 

[225] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

them forth. The very food for coKc. But before 
I yield to doubt, a moist nose is nuzzling at my 
palm. There is a quick wet slip, a crunch, and 
a hot breath upon me. At once the horde per- 
ceives that here is matter for contention, and 
a dozen pairs of horns are swiftly tilting in the 
fray. Lest I be brought to earth, I dissipate 
the ranks by flinging wide my whole stock of 
provisions and by stirring up a civil strife, I 
make my own ignored retreat. 

I need, however, but a glimpse of the pushing, 
crowding heads behind me to know that I have 
made a tactical mistake. Peas were as nothing, 
a mere side dish in comparison. This time I have 
whetted appetite, aroused a conquering lust. 
Never again -will my antagonists be content with 
simple rationing. Gone are the bleak beggarly 
days. They will have satisfaction, if not supplied, 
then seized. Better the earlier summons that 
drifted plaintively across the meadows in terms 
of question and entreaty than this full-voiced 
demand that swells in volume if I venture forth. 
I cannot even go about my household tasks or 
creep about my garden without the consciousness 

[226] 



Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

of the disturbing chorus ; and as it grows insistent, 
I am surprised before accusing eyes into a guilty 
start. Moreover, there are signs of feverish activ- 
ity. The path about my fortress is now beaten 
brown. Its battlements are stripped for scaling, 
freed from the grape vines' curling tendrils and 
glossy leaves. In panic I attempt to shift my 
front by strategy and make my entry, not from 
my own but from my neighbors' fields. But the 
enemy are not to be diverted by such feints. 
They change their bivouac methodically, moving 
up from under cover of the oak tree to a first 
line trench, held in the open and not ten feet 
from my wall. There, mustering their number, 
they stand in close formation, their bayonetsi 
lifted, awaiting the signal of assault. 

When it comes, it is unheralded. Dusk has 
settled in the valley ; and as I sit off guard upon 
my porch, I hear only the chafing of the tide and 
soft squelching noises as a muskrat fares his hid- 
den way among the swale. Then suddenly a 
sentry gives the sharp alarm. "The cows are in 
the corn. They're at your Peep of Day." Sack 
and pillage, desecration ! Gone is my weak-kneed 

[227] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

altruism, my missionary spirit of enlightenment 
and of assuagement. With the sacred fury of 
a medieval knight, I rush forth to the battle, and 
the challenge that I cry is "a I'outrance." There 
shall be no quarter. As I bear down, however, 
on the first invader, she nods a careless recog- 
nition and refuses to give ground. Even when 
hard-pressed with shaft and bludgeon, she sets 
her legs and raises questioning eyes. And stol- 
idly all the while her mouth travels down a dis- 
appearing corn-stalk. It is only after a last tug 
has ripped it from the earth and secured it with 
roots dangling, that she turns tail. Then hastily 
I engage in a new contest and brandishing aloft 
my weapons, I hurl myself upon each foe. What 
though I be outnumbered ten to one ? My blood 
is up. No force can stand against my holy rage. 
I beat them back. I drive them fleeing in dis- 
order. The orchard rings with war-cries and the 
tumult of the rout. But when at last they are 
repulsed and there is a lull in combat, I send 
for reenforcements and recover strength while I 
mount guard. 

They are a long time in arriving. Darkness 
[228] 



Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

closes in and as sentinel, I face a wall of silent, 
solid black. Somewhere behind it in their ambush 
the enemy are lurking; and though I cannot 
guess their movements, I know that they are ral- 
lying to attack. With a clutching of the heart, 
I hear at last the footing of their cavalry. It 
deepens ominously as it gathers speed. There 
is a rending of the apple boughs and soon the 
whole orchard is swaying to the charge. Dim 
shapes rush forth that gather size as they plunge 
from the shadows until they loom like legendary 
beasts. Gone is my elation, gone my valiance. I 
am no Viking to contend with monstrous hosts. 
I would make offer of an armistice and before I 
am battered to consent of half my stores. It is 
only my pride that keeps weight in my heels. 
However, just as the column dashes forward I 
find myself sustained upon both wings. On the 
left it brings up against my mother's outstretched 
lance and wheeling suddenly to the right, it is 
confronted by my landlord whose weapon is his 
voice. Back it reels, repulsed, into the dark. 

But though beleaguering, we are beleaguered. 
There is no chance of pressing forward to a mil- 

[229] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

Wary victory. Nor may we bring our prisoners 
in. For we have set a trap we may not spring 
and to make good our conquest, we must hold 
painful vigil at the mouth. We should be in 
for a long night's watch were it not that at last 
a lantern wavers down the hillside and that suc- 
cor comes. This time it is brought by the com- 
mander of the enemy who has had news of the 
fray. Little he cares for our predicament. He 
gives no greeting, makes no comment, but goes 
silentljT^ to work. Thud follows thud as he levels 
a portion of the rampart and opens up a breach. 
And once he has made an exit for escape, he 
musters quietly his forces till with a crackling 
of the underbrush he leads them through. 

As we make repairs by reconstructing a tem- 
porary entanglement, I know that the nice 
moment for recriminations has arrived. There is 
no commendation for any meritorious service, and 
no reward for valor. By my landlord I am ac- 
cused of willful treason in treating with the enemy 
and hotly I make countercharge of sloth. Repri- 
mands fly back and forth. Now pressure is 
removed there is division in the ranks. But when 

[230] 



Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 

at last I stand convicted before a high tribunal, 
there is no need for my judges to affix a penalty. 
I have brought one on myself. The enemy have 
learned the way to storm my citadel and in this 
preliminary skirmish they have been repulsed, 
not vanquished. Next time they will select their 
hour more wisely and make profit of the dawn. 
Gone for the summer is our pleasant intercourse, 
and gone is my security. I have made sacrifice 
of slumber and never — not until next season — 
shall I know "glad confident morning again." 



[231] 



XIII: This Thornhush, My Thornbush 



GROWTH 

So far the willow reaches down, 

It meets a hidden spring; 
And in the ripple of its leaves 

Is water murmuring. 

So hard the cedar cleaves the ledge, 
It finds its strength renewed; 

And shapes its somber blade and hilt. 
From granite fortitude. 

So close the beech tree keeps within 
The dusk which it has made, 

That every silver root receives 
Companionship of shade. 

So strong the elm has felt the swell 
Of growth beneath the turf. 

It flows up to a reef of clouds 
And breaks into green surf. 

[235] 




XIII: This Thornbush, My Thornbush 

I LIKE color, swads of it." I remember many 
a morning at Touisset when, as I toiled about 
the roots of plants noticing only an increase in 
girth or a new sturdiness of growth, my father 
would stand behind me, uttering patiently these 
mild words of censure. In those early days of 
our garden only the hollyhocks contented him. 
When in a stalwart array they began to unfold 
their crumpled petals, salmon, maroon, blood red, 
he would stand before them, watching the bees 
tumble over their dusty stamens with a look of 

[237] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

iniSnite satisfaction. But the moment that they 
had lost their ruffled skirts and I had borne away 
their stalks to ward off an army of small seed- 
lings, there followed the old complaint, "I like 
color in a garden, swads of it." 

How could one procure it? Even the gardener 
with an unlimited acreage of seed-beds would 
have had difficulty in satisfying so exigent a 
critic; one who took the fields and swamps as his 
own garden and would lead me, when I made 
protest of my inability, to a special tangle that 
he loved, ablaze with our own Turk's cap lilies. 
They were often some five feet tall, towering 
well above his shoulders as he stood among them, 
cap in hand, in token of no mock respect. This 
place, I think he regarded as peculiarly his own. 
Certainly he had a scowl for each marauder, and 
would, had he been able, have stationed as its 
guard, an angel with a flaming sword. 

It was there that I had my inspiration. I 
could not, to be sure, lift unharmed one of its 
glories from this cool swamp. But might I not 
in a smaller, less pretentious way make the fields 
my seed-bed. Not much later and in secret, I 

[238] 



This Thornhush, My Thornbush 

made my first attempt. In a neighboring 
meadow, I fomid the furry tufts of the rudbeckia 
(ox-eyed Susan) which shorn by the scythe of 
its first crop, was just ready for an autumn 
blossoming. I waited for a rain. Then all unbe- 
knownst I toiled, lifting each plant with a thick 
ball of earth. For several days their green con- 
cealed them. Then little by little their calyxes 
relaxed, until one morning I looked out to see 
their petals open to the sun, a flaunting glow of 
orange. I had achieved success. At last we had 
color, "swads of it." 

Our walks after this took on an added zest, 
though we were now encumbered with a spade, 
and though we were often forced to make return 
trips to the scene of pillage. We were ambitious 
in those days and had not yet known failure. 
That came later when we tried to make our own 
the ironweed with its deep purple, funereal almost 
in its gloomy splendor. Our next attempt was 
the cardinal flower, lifted only by sinking the 
arms deep in muck. Hectic days followed that 
act of bravado. Each morning as part of his 
routine, my father would hurry forth with his own 

[239] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

pitcher to fortify it against the summer heat. 
Many a time during the day, moreover, its droop- 
ing stalk would reveal the need of further sus- 
tenance. But when at last it had unfurled its 
crimson banner in the shade of our old maple, 
as if indeed it had sought there its own habita- 
tion, we had again achieved success. Less ardu- 
ous, though not in transportation, was our garden 
of fall asters. The most beautiful of these, Aster 
Novae Angliae, only whose full title my father 
thought was consonant with its dignity, we placed 
at the rear, a background of rich purple, its flow- 
ers folding at dusk their petals over starry yellow 
centers. And before them, the wild white aster 
that in autumn silvers our fields like hoar frost. 
Then at last content with present store we laid 
in a treasure for the coming year; Aquilegia 
Canadensis, the scarlet columbine, and the ferns 
surrounding it, "little polys," as my father affec- 
tionately called them, moved together that they 
might not seem incongruous among our more 
pretentious purchases ; Iris Prismatica that grows 
so thickly through our open swamps that it lends 
them in its season violet shadows ; sweetbriar from 

[240] 



Comrades in Crime 

pea-leaves steeped in dew or beans just free of 
their petals. And for salad, something far better 
than hearts of lettuce, the tiny twin leaves. By 
this time they had to take a stroll and straighten 
their waistcoats before arriving at a wide choice 
in sweets. My banquet, in short, was progressive, 
of the sort once in fashion, its object being, how- 
ever, not the acquaintance with more guests but 
more food. I am not sure that in my sleep I did 
not long to be with Shellover and Creep, an 
unprincipled epicure, too, and with a capacity 
equal to theirs. In the approved modern fashion 
I did understand the psychology of my criminals. 
But that was before I had caught them. Once 
they were mine, I felt that the obligation should 
have been mutual and that it was not too much 
to ask of my criminals to have entered into the 
psychology of their judge. 



[257] 



XV: Followers of Scant Francis 



^-^^^*^ 







XV: Followers of Saint Francis 

SOME years ago when friends were young and 
found a bravery in bluntness, there was one 
who objected frankly to my character. It was, 
she said, too amiably rounded. It had no corners. 
In its adjustment to a convex world, it had 
become concave; and the Olympian serenity 
which its amplitude suggested might just as weU 
be termed a stodgy calm. I think she even added 
that mine was a lowly nature, that it hugged the 
ground, and basked in mellow sunlight, looking 
never so absurdly bland as in a time of storm. 

[261] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

In short, I have never been a wind-break. 
Gales surge above that never reach me. Mares' 
tails whisk across an open sky and never catch 
upon my crown. A mackerel sky will lower and 
still not rest its sullenness upon my roof. Hud- 
dled close along the base of nobler structures, 
I intercept at best ground flurries. Only such 
unpleasant httle gusts as otherwise would whirl 
into a corner, only such spiteful httle puffs as 
would find a niche for spiral or for eddy, do I 
make it my business to send glancing off. 

How it happened thus I could not tell you. 
For my family considered architecturally, are 
Gothic. Their passions have a loftiness about 
them and go soaring upward to a dizzy peak. 
Their prejudices raise sharp battlements, their 
dislikes will shut like massive doors. Their con- 
victions, too, fly out like buttresses with an oppos- 
ing jog and thrust. And whereas you might 
walk around my smooth exterior and not discover 
where I pointed, their base you would immedi- 
ately recognize as square and built to face north 
east. 

You will be wise then if you visit me but in 
[262] 



Followers of Saint Francis 

the mildest weather. A pavilion built for pleas- 
ure is no refuge. When tempests rage, when 
troubles brew, you had best seek out my people 
and the girdhng safety of their convent walls. 

Only you need not hope to enter unless you 
are possessed of four legs, a creeping belly, or 
a pair of wings. If you were a dinosaur, they 
would give you a God's rest from leaping and 
offer you the porch. If you were leviathan and 
wallowed up the tide-stream, they would shine 
with interest and keep dinner waiting while they 
eased you of your hook. Were you behemoth, 
they would lead you to the marsh, and in its 
ooziness invite you to cool off your sides. Even 
were you Adam's serpent, they would apply cold 
cream and lotion to your head so grievously 
afflicted and erase the bruise of human heel. But 
as man, you will not win attention. To gain 
more than a passing notice, you must crawl or 
flutter in. For they are followers of St. Francis, 
that friend of hide and fur and feathers. So are 
the retreats they offer never cots, but nests and 
burrows, crevices and lairs. 

[263] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

If you do not believe me, drop unwarily into 
the water-lane that winds slowly backward past 
our house and act as though you thought it pub- 
lic property. Its chuckling pools are in reality 
the very place for bait and your net will come 
scooping up with treasure. But before you have 
waded to mid -channel, my mother will have heard 
your splash and stir and be making down the 
path in a mad scurry. Then will you learn that 
your presence is affront and that you have 
intruded on her convent close. In fact, quite as 
though you thought yourself upon the highroad, 
you are tramphng through each still recess. 

Her rebuke is breathless. "Don't you touch 
my turtle." . 

Startled, you protest you have not seen him. 
Nor has she. Some three weeks at least he has 
spent in retreat, executing doubtless some strange 
vow of solitude. Even on feast days he is unap- 
proachable and reticent, capricious in his grat- 
itude. At the same time, if you were not there, 
she might perhaps detect his ugly head thrust 
forward from the folds of his black cowl and a 

[264] 




HE&E HE FINDS IT PLEASANT TO UE STILL AND WATCH THE FMGKEKING 
SHADOWS OF THE WILLOW. 



[265] 



Followers of Saint Francis 

lackluster eye that blinked at her inquiringly. 
Or under the dark arch of the bridge, she might 
catch him lying coolly at his ease, his great body 
stayed against the tide by just the laziest waving 
of fringed claws. So at least he oftenest finds 
it pleasant to lie still and watch the flickering 
shadows of the willow. That twice or thrice a 
season in the past six years she has so found him 
or has heard his flop and squelching footfall in 
the night, is his title to domain and hers to inti- 
mate possession. 

Only since my mother finds it good to watch 
her brethren dwell in unity, she makes him share 
his quarters. They are also the muskrat's who 
takes them for his swims, emerging from the 
dankness of his cell in the stone wall for his due 
share of exercise and pastime. A more quiet 
purpose, too, they serve when they grow dim in 
the half-light. For here at dusk night herons 
come like monks austerely hooded in chill gray, 
the embodiments of a pale spiritual melancholy. 
Slowly they steal down the corridors of sedge 
and once they reach the pool stand silent at 

[267] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

their vespers. Their quiet service, as lay-sister, 
I am privileged to share, but your presence, I 
assure you, will be taken as an act of sacrilege. 

Nor need you imagine that you may take 
delight in the garden which lures you from the 
road by its bright wave of color. Not for human 
eyes are its inducements offered. Each fir tree 
and spruce which you regard for shape and shade 
or for fine subtleties of texture, my mother 
judges for the practicable thickness of its walls 
for nests and bj^ the stoutness of its scaffolding. 
The gooseberry or cherry which you would plump 
so carelessly into your mouth with pleasure in 
its spurt of coolness, is meant to be pouched whole 
by chipmunk or pecked by robin to a juicy froth. 
Should you idly beg a spray of columbine, you 
will be made to understand that its deep cups 
are serviceable beakers set to assuage the thirst 
of a long bill or of a curved proboscis. Indeed, 
the privet hedge I think serves less with its green 
shield from curious eyes than with its public pegs 
on which fat yellow spiders may stretch taut their 
silver clothes-Hnes. Down this path and down 

[268] 



Followers of Saint Francis 

that, you may go only under guidance. Else is 
it certain that you will stroll blundering in on 
shy domestic rites. And lest your carelessness 
turn to intentioned prying, my mother leads your 
steps with apparent reasons that are her subtle 
feints. "Would you like to have some roses?" 
she implores you, as you stand precariously near 
the pear tree. "There are more buds for cutting 
in the border just beyond." And how are you 
to guess that all the bounty she snips off for you, 
is her glad exchange for your dull blindness to 
the yellow warblers who were flitting just above 
you and to a little horse hair cup built snug in 
a low crotch? Never would you be sharp enough 
to take your yieldings from the seed-bed as a 
service to the catbird. Yet how else save by such 
proffer were you to be induced from the syringa 
where a clean and brisk-eyed fellow was waiting 
to take the froth of blossoms in a dive. Only 
my mother will grow frank in desperation if you 
disturb the wood-thrush, a shy visitant who in 
rare times of drouth will deign to use our pool. 
It is not for you to catch a ghmpse of her white 
breast in an upthrown shower of spray no more 

[269] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

than it was meet for Acteon to gaze on the fleet 
form of Artemis. 

Not more welcome are you on the porch, for it 
long since was taken over and converted to a 
nursery and hospital for vagrants. At one end, 
to be sure, there is a private room, decently with- 
drawn, close-curtained with the broad flat leaves 
of pipe-vine. This bed is, I think, perpetually 
endowed. Certainly the same family of robins 
refurbish it each spring and in late summer leave 
it waiting, trim and tidy. But at the other end, 
walled with wistaria and stanchioned by a climb- 
ing briar, there is a pubhc ward where berths are 
given out without regard for race or creed or 
color. Even English sparrows, pariahs from 
all other charitable organizations, are given wel- 
come here. Indeed, in the top tier they take the 
adventure of maternity like the coarse peasants 
that they are, with a frank talk of all its signs 
and symptoms. Certainly they shock their little 
chirping cousin upon whom they look down with 
no regard for her shy reticence and nervous 
apprehension. 

It is because of her, however, that you may not 
[270] 



Followers of Saint Francis 

stretch out in the Gloucester hammock and let 
your mind fill with the peace that brims rich pas- 
ture lands and sun-soaked valley. For with each 
slow creak and swing of the long chain, my 
mother sees a tiny cinnamon cap upraised until 
at last a fluttering bravery has end in rout. Then 
will talk grow distrait until the house physician 
has explained that you had better change your 
seat since eggs are perilously cooling for your 
pleasure. 

But, if when nesting time is over and the nur- 
sery left vacant, you sup with us upon the porch, 
you will find the shoe upon the other foot. It 
is you who are imperiled. You will not think 
perhaps the quiet scene in front could hold a 
threat. The pale arc of sky, the spreading shad- 
ows that reach softly out from waning light, the 
salt breeze that smells of dusk, lead you to expect 
a meal where all is dilly-dally and calm leisure. 
But in a moment you are springing from your 
seat as a black wasp, straightforward and direct, 
comes swinging towards you with his long legs 
traiUng. He is a lean and vigorous fellow, you 
are sure of that, and of his personal malice. It 

[271] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

is only quick avoidance on your part and an 
uncertain lunge on his, that prevent the parry 
and thrust of swift collision. As you seat your- 
self again, you find another wasp has dropped 
upon your plate and is punctuating his slow prog- 
ress round its rim with tilt of tail and quivering 
vicious stabs. Then to calm your perturbation, 
my mother will explain that if you pay him no 
attention, eat so to speak around him, the chances 
are he will not harm you. You are merely in the 
right of way to his especial vaulted cell beneath 
the eaves. 

It is within the house that you will find the 
strangest topsyturveydom and most extravagant 
reversal. A window that must not be opened, less 
for the danger it will bring to you than for the 
disturbance to the yellow- jackets whose nest of 
wattled silver hangs pendulous outside. Another 
window that must not be raised except with care- 
ful courtesy for the spider, a black ogre, lurking 
in his cavern. Or perhaps pinned on a door there 
is a notice that forbids all entrance until a spar- 
row, too late rescued, has been given chance 
for quiet and unhurried death. Last summer, 

[272] 



Followers of Saint Francis 

moreover, I received a hurry call from town to 
make ready for an inmate, this time a womided 
pigeon. To me a roomy box upon the porch 
seemed the largess of hospitality. But once my 
brother saw a desperate agate eye fixed on him 
from this prison gloom and a sleek silver breast 
pressed rounding through the bars, the free hab- 
itat of his own bureau top came as his natural 
suggestion. Its usual adornments were not 
among the real importances of life. Its narrow 
glossy surface was adapted to quick cleanliness. 
Newspapers might be spread, a bowl of water 
might be placed, grain for delectation might be 
scattered here and there, and lest the coral feet 
might weary with long standing, there might be 
sprinkled a soft cool covering of dirt. Suppose 
the kernels of round corn did whisk upon the 
floor, or that dust was lifted in a cloud by stretch- 
ing wings, or water slopped in a long creeping 
puddle. Was this not after all my brother's 
room? To share it was small price to pay for 
the bestowal of emancipation. Not once did it 
occur to him that such as looked within might 
find as matter for their mirth, the squatting fig- 

[273] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

ure whose plumpness took the place of pin- 
cushion. There was even nothing to remark 
when the whole explanation of the matter was so 
simple. 

Yet not so simple seem those folk who hold a 
different attitude of mind; and it is in conflict 
with them that I could wish my people in addi- 
tion to their other vows, had sealed their lips 
with vow of silence. If my Franciscans you 
would see at their Gothic best, be with them when 
they chance upon some victim of man's tyranny 
or ignorance. Brute cruelty, they call it. A hen 
too tightly cooped and pecking through the wires 
for a near blade of grass will send them out to 
proselji;e at once and with no pleasant mincing 
of their charges. A flock of geese left quacking- 
dry upon a sultry day will drive them forth to 
preach the gospel of assuagement and benefi- 
cence. A horse, yanked and beaten on the road 
will transform them to Knights Templars. In 
a second they are up in arms ; the cudgel, not the 
gospel their stern method with such heathen. 
And no matter what the provocation for it, let 
them come upon a biting steel-edged trap, and 

[274] 



Followers of Saint Francis 

you are in to hear in a blood-curdling volley the 
whole round of their anathemas. To expiate 
such curse, there is no sufficient penance. To 
them it is nothing that our neighbors look at us 
askance, that the market-man will pass us by, 
that we shall be cut off from provisions and from 
f riendhness. Theirs is the blood of martyrs ; and 
though for it they starve or are cast out, they 
must defend the truth that rises in them. There 
is no finesse to your convinced fanatic. 

It is these attempts at forced conversion that 
I make it my business to forestall by my own 
lowly means of guile and subterfuge. For the 
hen, — ^if at least the chances are that she will 
come within my brother's range, I offer half my 
store of chicken wire and the suggestion that she 
might lay better for a little freedom. For the 
geese, I fetch and carry surreptitiously on a warm 
day until I set them guzzhng. You might even 
think that I was one of the devout and not a 
lover of mere human amity. For the horse, left 
waiting in the road and likely to gain punish- 
ment for his willful edging towards the hedge, 
I idly amble down the path and keep him out of 

[275] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

mischief by stuffing with long wisps his eager, 
quivering muzzle. I have even contemplated 
planting lettuce at the burrow of the woodchuck 
in little weekly crops. Such at least as I conceive 
them are my duties as lay-sister to this order of 
Franciscans ; those humble offices which preserve 
relationship between the austere brethren of the 
convent and the unprofessed and unenlightened 
who so blithely go their gait outside our walls. 



[276] 



XVI: Parting Guests 



RAG-TAG AND BOB-TAIL 

Rag-tag and bob-tail, 

Finery won't last; 
All display is laid aside 

Now that summer's past. 

The catbird's doffed his cutaway, 

The robin, his loud vest; 
The oriole, his robe of flame; 

The quail, his visored crest. 

There's tarnish on the marigold, 
The corn-flower's blue cockade 

Is rent and tattered. At their edge 
The dahlia cuffs are frayed. 

The poplar's lost its glossiness, 

The willow tree its gleams, 
The facing of the maple leaves 

Shows wear along the seams. 

Rag-tag and bob-tail. 

Who would ever guess 
Spring's young joy in foppery 

And in gaudiness? 

[279] 




''^ 



-^— >-•- 



XVI: Parting Guests 

IN the Chinese language there is a picture for 
the word "hospitahty," which any foreigner 
might guess. Two quick strokes of the pen in 
a fork to represent a biped, a flat stroke above 
him, the proffered roof. Take the horizontal 
stroke away and you have mere man, destitute 
and seeking shelter. Add it and you stand com- 
mitted. What you have is his. That that simple 
act is fraught with responsibilities, we discovered, 
when in a similar attempt to communicate by 

[281] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

sign language, we planted vines about our porch. 
And how lavish we were with our oifer, much 
as if the Chinaman had repeated his symbol down 
the length of an interminable page to catch first, 
not the understanding, but the eye. At one end 
it took the form of a pipe vine, its great leaves 
a flat curtain against the sun. In front, of ram- 
bler roses whose comfortable crotches could not 
be missed ; and over them to eke out the foliage, 
the akebia twined its delicate five-fingered leaves. 
At the other end were tangles of soft clematis 
and a wistaria to furnish stiff support. Was it 
any wonder that those who flew might read ? 

Such an offer we should never have extended 
to human beings. We live in a churlish fashion 
back from the road and talk a great deal of our 
privacy and the length of our approach. We like 
people to come when invited. We do not like 
them to drop in. But let there be a flicker from 
an early redbreast and there is a supply of string 
already cut. In a moment it is strewn about the 
grass where a quick eye may see it. Let the 
chipmunk scamper across the lawn. He will 
hardly have assmned his pauper's attitude and 

[282] 



Parting Guests 

have settled himself upon his little haunches 
before a supply of grain is under his quivering 
nostrils. It takes bird or beast to find our 
manners. 

When, thus, on our arrival for the summer, 
we found a robin had installed herself upon the 
porch we at once surrendered ownership. If 
she had taken possession of the front door, well 
then, as proper hosts we took the back. There 
was a magnificence about that act of surrender 
that should have been attended with a greater 
pomp. No royal abdication could have wrought 
more personal inconvenience. Bags, boxes, 
trunks, were heaped up at the rear by an irate 
expressman who had no patience with such fine- 
ness of courtesy and who refused to manipulate 
them through the smaller door. It seemed a pity 
that it should look less like an act of hospitality 
than an eviction. But that day no foot was set 
upon the porch, and when night came, the cur- 
tain was drawn early that the light might not 
shine into the robin's eyes. 

Later we found that we had acted with an 
excess of courtesy. Our guest was quite willing 

[283] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

to share her province. Indeed, I think she pre- 
ferred to; for, as she sat spread out above her 
eggs with the tip of a tail and her shy head show- 
ing, she would cast a friendly eye upon me as I 
passed beneath, quite as though I gave diversion 
to her patient vigil. Sometimes her mate would 
scold me as I whisked a broom about the porch 
and from his vantage point on the top maple 
twig, would flap his wings and give sharp testy 
squawks. But his displeasure seemed to come 
from a masculine aversion to my house-cleaning 
rather than from any personal distrust. And 
surely on the day the eggs were hatched, I was 
taken into confidence. There was a tap of the 
bill, a quick turn of the head to see if I was 
watching. Then as I betrayed my eagerness, the 
mother bird would settle to her task again with 
an upward tilt of the beak that was sure reproof 
to my mere spinster's patience. 

But after that day she had little time for me 
in the midst of her busy, flurried trips. Her mate, 
with whom I now made close acquaintance, was 
far more formal. His advance was methodical 
and made in calculated stages. Three hops up 

[284] 



Parting Guests 

the steps and a flick of the tail, a flutter to the 
chair-back then a quick dart to the nest while 
all the time a worm was dangling down his waist- 
coat. It was his duty to provide, but he took his 
time about it and gave it an air of pompous con- 
descension. 

In a short time three yellow beaks appeared 
above the rim, opening at the first sign of 
approach. Then only I learned the meaning of 
the word "maw." There was no closing them. 
A quick gulp and again they were open. A few 
more days and three long necks were visible. It 
was at this stage that I marveled at maternal 
pride. But when at last the birds had feathered 
out and sat facing me, their beaks tilted upward 
and their white bibs showing, I berated myself 
for my distrust. By this time they had begun to 
give themselves airs. They would plume them- 
selves like old fops, they resented cuddling; and 
even on cold days when their mother tried to 
hover them, she found it awkward work. No 
sooner would she settle over them, than a head 
pried up each wing and a small plump figure 
would sprawl out from her breast. 

[285] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

At last an evening came when protection was 
no longer possible. That night as I pulled the 
curtain down, I think I sensed their danger, 
tucked in for the first time without a sheltering 
wing. But I was not prepared for the sharp cry 
of anguish that later brought me to my feet. I 
arrived just in time to flash my torch upon two 
beady eyes and a large gray figure scampering 
down the vines. When at last I had clambered 
to the nest and put my hand in, it was empty. 
Then as my mother held a flaring lamp, I reached 
about the ground below. In a moment my hands 
were on something soft and warm, a fat, downy, 
little ball. Then another. The last I thought 
that I should never find. Indeed, had I not had 
in mind the evil face among the vines, I had given 
up the search. But finally I came across it, cow- 
ering perilously under foot. The first receptacle 
that we found in our desperation was the fireless 
cooker. There, after covering it with a warm 
cloth, we left our charges ill-contented with their 
new abode. 

I slept impatiently that night. I could not 
bear to think of the long patient weeks of brood- 

[286] 



Parting Guests 

ing and with no avail. At an early houi' I heard 
a quick eager caroling. It was followed by a 
hush, the silence of discovery. When into the 
cool gray dawn I had rushed out with my bur- 
den, the father was already on the trellis, a worm 
dribbling from, his beak, the mother making fran- 
tic search among the leaves. As I moved the 
tin upon the lawn and waited, they eyed me with 
suspicion. Was I making sport of tragedy ? But 
as I lifted one fledgling in my hand, then placed 
it fluttering on the grass, there was an instant 
sign of recognition, a quick tilt of the head. Back 
I put the bird and disappeared. In a moment 
I saw the mother swoop to within a foot of the 
can, hop towards it cautiously, peck its gleaming 
surface and then listen, head cocked on one side. 
Round and round she went, much as I might 
have encircled an oil tank had I known it to 
contain my off^spring. At last after a breathless 
pause, she hopped upon the rim and regarded 
fixedly the miracle before her eyes. But she was 
above all things practical and was soon on the 
wing in search for food. Once I was sure that 
the tank had conveyed the idea of home, I moved 

[287] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

it to the porch, and as she fluttered to it, almost 
before I had set it down, I knew that I at least 
was vindicated in her ej^es. 

And well I might be, for from that day my 
labors far exceeded hers. Each morning, to be 
sure when I arose at dawn to put out my hungry 
charges, their parents were already waiting, 
though now quite patientlj^ with worm in beak. 
But after all they were providers and their duties 
were intermittent. I was nurse-maid and mine 
never ceased. There was no reasoning with my 
foundlings. No amount of pressure could con- 
vince them of their present safety. They simply 
didn't like the fireless cooker. They had only 
tolerated their nest because it gave them an unim- 
peded outlook on the world outside. Sometimes 
a bee had buzzed by and they had opened their 
little beaks, or a fish-hawk had swooped by and 
they had cowered in a dehghtful terror. But this 
was prison without a view. They protested, they 
summoned up their growing strength and in two 
days the strongest of the trio had fluttered to 
the rim where he sat hunched like an old man, 
yet with a look of inquiry and daring in his young 

[288] 



Partmg Guests 

eyes. Nor was it long before one and all, they 
had passed from my control. I could only guard 
them from afar, heading them off from places of 
danger by driving them in a quick succession of 
hops across the lawn. 

In the daytime the mother seemed quite confi- 
dent. As I met her running down the path 
attended closely by her hungry brood she would 
scold me roundly for my officious watchfulness 
and bid me cease my interference. But at dusk 
she grew plainly anxious and would summon me 
to her assistance by sharp squawks, fretful at 
first, but insistent if I delayed. Then as I 
appeared bearing in one hand the fireless cooker, 
she would flutter low before me until one by one 
I had gathered in her flock. They, too, seemed 
to expect me as they crouched low in the grass 
like young runaways, their beaks uptilted for a 
peek at my covering hand. With that one sign 
of resistance, however, their bravado vanished and 
they were ready to snuggle down. In these bed- 
time rites the father took no part. He would 
merely select his perch as spectator and watch 
with an interest which, if keen, was detached, 

[289] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

and held nothing of obhgation. But once I had 
started homeward with my burden he would fol- 
low me with song, uttered just before flight as 
an act of exquisite courtesy. 

One evening I was suddenly aware that I 
had heard no summons. I suspected that silence 
meant my discharge, but I wished to make sure. 
Low on the syringa bush I found the mother. 
This time she made no move to share her secrets. 
She flew by without sign of recognition. Indeed, 
I might have been a nurse-maid whom she had 
dismissed. Yet, glad as I was to be rid of my 
charges I could not return her slight with indif- 
ference. I had been in the family too long for 
that. Instead I continued my search until high 
in the grape vines, I came upon a figure, wee and 
defenseless, but with a determined clutch to his 
claws and a set to his stubby tail that bade me 
defiance. Protection I saw at a glance would 
be an insult. He was no mollycoddle, but a man 
of the world. 

Lonely as I was at their departurie, I was de- 
termined that I should have no more guests. Had 
I been the Chinaman with the scroll I should have 

[290] 



Parting Guests 

quickly made an erasure and scratched out the 
roof. Unfortunately, however, my offer of hos- 
pitaHty had been put in more permanent form. 
I could not uproot it. Whenever it met with an 
eager acceptance, I could only rush forth with 
a broom and proclaim by acts of persistent dis- 
courtesy that my invitation had been recalled. 



[291] 



XVII: Condescension that Withers 




XVII: Condescension that Withers 



IF you purchased a cheap car, you would not, 
I know, engage a chauffeur who had run 
only those of an impressive make. You would 
have the wisdom to foresee machinery turned 
mulish and an engine stalled. But I have never 
hired a gardener who, because of his own garden, 
did not have a snobbish attitude towards mine. 
The worst of it is that these men are not really 
gardeners but such as "oblige me" with scant 
extra hours of daylight. They have other tasks 
in which they exert professional skill. I employ 

[295] 



Robin Hood*s Barn 

them, moreover, as mere implements to turn the 
soil. Certainly I do not hire them as advisers, 
as scientific producers of crops, and least of all 
as critics. Yet let them set a foot upon my place. 
What a swift glance of appraisal they cast! 
What a look of contented rivalry I The most 
that they can hope to accomplish for my garden 
is to make it approach a little distantly, the patri- 
otic vision that shines forth so jubilantly from 
their eyes. 

To see them you might not believe me. There 
is Healey, the flagman. All day he slumbers 
by the station, his chair tilted in the sunlight, his 
cap drawn down over his purple cheeks and heavy 
jowl. His insignia of office droops in one lax 
hand. Even when he trundles to the track his 
red flag is only half unfurled. Yet somewhere 
under his slouching figure there are muscles that 
are firm with hoeing. His rounding shirt-front 
has been double creased in a stiff fight with 
weeds. I know — if at least there be any justice; 
for I ache in every limb, and Healey's tomatoes 
have begun to flower while mine are but a single 

[296] 



Condescension that Withers 

stalk ; Healey's beans are up the bean-poles while 
mine have not begun to coil. 

And there is Tim. He shovels coal of nights 
at the pumping station, sleeping in the morning 
and emerging late in the afternoon like a little 
gnome who has ventured forth to find the day- 
light blinding. There are certain tasks that I 
should never think of giving him. Even as he 
turns the sod, his small legs staggering under 
his big shovel, it is only my sex and his boasts 
that keep me from lending him a hand. But 
while my potatoes are a scant two bushels, mere 
little brown eggs that leave my fervor at low ebb, 
Tim's have grown unblighted and in half my 
ground he has tripled my yield. 

With Patsy I feel less humiliation. As he 
comes up the drive in his scarlet blazer, his broad 
face and gold teeth shining under his visored cap, 
you could best imagine him chinning with the 
bleachers or sending a swift ball to third. In 
reality he is a barber. Is it that I often wonder 
that makes him so skillful with his clippers? 
What trim edges he leaves. Is the gravel path a 
collar to his imagination? Do the peony bushes 

[297] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

stand out from it in the place of ears? In any 
case when he has finished, the garden has a pro- 
fessional cut. But leave him for an instant. 
In that instant all the children of the neighbor- 
hood will have gathered close about him. Or he 
will have wandered up the track to borrow a hoe, 
or he will be sending his great voice down the 
drive to hail every passerby. Even under my di- 
rection, he works with half an eye. The other eye 
is down the road where human interest travels. 
"There is a man who can take the heart out of 
your razor for you." He points with a flourish 
at an indistinguishable figure. And a moment 
before he had been telhng me that my roses threw 
a lovely bloom. Now when I work I set my mind 
upon my task. I look firmly to the end of the 
row that dazzles in the sunlight and bend my 
back towards it like a mole, my mind closed to 
all distractions. Yet this man who can work 
so nonchalantly has kept me enviously peering 
through my pea vines for the first white bonnet. 
Nor does the pride of these men stop with their 
own prowess. It has other forms with which it 
is as hard to cope. Healey's father was a gar- 

[398] 



Condescension that Withers 

dener on an English estate. He himself was thus 
brought up on ribbon beds. If you will listen, 
he will tell you. First a row of lobelia, then 
feathery-few, then Phlox Drummondii. He rolls 
out the last name as the proudest part of his 
inheritance, and with a contemptuous glance 
looks down upon my edging of clove pinks. His 
foot is already on his spade in menace. Mine to 
him is a grubby little place. There, there were 
"h'acres and h'acres of h'orchids." Do you won- 
der that he cannot keep to my diminutive paths? 
His feet once strode up avenues of green sward. 
Is it strange that he tramples carelessly upon 
my seed-bed? What was even a "h'orchid from 
a whole h'acre?" Tim's pretensions rest on one 
sole day when he toiled in a famous garden in 
the neighborhood. Since then I may not grow 
my dahlias as the vulgar grow them in the open 
earth. They must rise out of grass; though 
underneath their branches if you look, you will 
find circles of brown soil cut with a compass and 
trimmed with disproportionate care. Tim, too, 
knows what's right. But for sheer undermining 
gi'owth no condescension equals Patsy's. It 

[299] 



Robin Hood's Barn 

would be impossible to uproot it. You cannot 
tell to what inconspicuous places it has reached. 
It has forced itself indoors. Surely not its prov- 
ince. "Ain't you got electric lights?" you find 
yourself asked suddenly. And before you can 
retort, he adds, "I got 'em in my cellar." Or it 
may suddenly turn personal. As we lean upon 
our hoes, his eye will fall upon my earth-caked 
hands. Now he couldn't afford to have his hands 
look like mine. His he must keep in condition. 
So it is that when the noon hour comes and I 
serve him dinner underneath the peach tree, I 
spread before him the whole bounty of our larder. 
Unobserved I dine on scraps. So far, at least, 
I have not learned what he would have had at 
home. 

Is it any wonder that when I am so craven 
under condescension, the garden should be struck 
as by a blight. Christian Scientists, they tell me, 
by holding the thought of infinite affluence may 
add to their estate. May not these men by an 
inverse process be devastating mine. Infinite 
poverty! They would express it differently, but 
that they hold the thought is evident in every 

[300] 



Condescension that Withers 

glance. Certain it is that under the malevolent 
spell, my peas must be twice planted, my tomato 
plants replaced. Even the feelers of my beans 
that usually reach forth so lustily, must ignomini- 
ously be coaxed with twine around the poles. 
What wonder that they need assistance. Jack's 
bean stalk grew not so fast as those with which 
they must contend. 

One remedy I have and loyalty compels its 
use. I should visit some of those other gardens. 
I suspect them. I have grown their kind myself. 
But, to tell the truth, though one is but a stone's 
throw from my cottage, I have never seen it. 
Instead, I skirt it gingerly, afraid, lest unawares, 
I shall receive one rash illuminating peek. For 
if I too have "played the braggart with my 
tongue," I have also paid the price. And I want 
mercy, I do not cry for judgment. The devasta- 
tion that would follow, the ruthless tearing down 
of jungle growth, is a toll that I for one cannot 
exact. 

THE END 

[301] 


















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